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51a7d10da0313a7b8d42fc9cddbbfeca | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13408877 | Sudan: SPLM rejects South Kordofan win for Ahmed Haroun | Sudan: SPLM rejects South Kordofan win for Ahmed Haroun
Sudan's former rebels have rejected the election victory of Ahmed Haroun, indicted for alleged war crimes committed in Darfur.
He has been declared the winner of the governorship poll in the oil-rich South Kordofan state, which borders potential flashpoints Darfur and South Sudan.
South Sudan is set to become independent in July, while civil war is still raging in Darfur.
Analysts fear the dispute could spark yet another conflict in Sudan.
The International Criminal Court accuses Mr Haroun of mobilising Arab militias to commit genocide against black African residents of Darfur when he was the minister there in 2003-4. He has denied any wrong-doing.
President Omar al-Bashir is also wanted on similar charges.
Mr Haroun, from the president's National Congress Party, defeated senior SPLM official Abdelaziz al-Hilu, according to the official results.
"We will not accept these results because the vote was rigged," said Yasir Arman, head of the SPLM in the north.
The SPLM fought the north for two decades before a 2005 peace deal, which paved the way for independence for the largely Christian and animist South Sudan from the mainly Muslim, Arabic-speaking north.
But many residents of the Nuba Mountains region of South Kordofan also fought for the SPLM and it is feared they could take up arms once more.
"These people were fighting for 20 years and their aspirations are not fulfilled," Hafiz Mohamed of the Justice Africa think-tank told the BBC's Network Africa programme.
"The way things are going, it's leading to a deadlock, which will end up with people carrying arms to release their frustration," he said.
"If it starts, no-one can stop it - it will affect the south, it will affect the north. With the war in Darfur, we are heading for dangerous times."
President Bashir has promised to accept South Sudan's independence but tensions have been rising recently over the disputed area of Abyei, which also borders South Kordofan.
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605622394806ff602a6f0fe129afc7aa | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13443186 | Guinea-Bissau country profile | Guinea-Bissau country profile
West Africa's Guinea-Bissau was part of the Portuguese Empire for centuries.
Once hailed as a potential model for African development, the country is now one of the poorest in the world.
The vital cashew nut crop provides a modest living for most of Guinea-Bissau's farmers, and is the main source of foreign exchange.
But today the nation has a massive foreign debt and an economy that relies heavily on foreign aid. It has become transhipment point for Latin American drugs.
At the end of the 1990s the country experienced a conflict which drew in Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, and France and ended with the president going into exile.
President: Umaro Sissoco Embaló
Mr Embaló won the December 2019 presidential election, but faced a last-minute stand-off with parliament before taking office in February.
This reflected the continuing instability of state institutions in a country that has seen nine coups or attempted coups since 1980, and the resistance of the long-governing PAIGC party to the victory of an opposition candidate.A former prime minister, Mr Embaló is the first president to be elected without the backing of the PAIGC.
His predecessor, Jose Mario Vaz, was the first elected leader since the army mutinied in 2012 and plunged the country - already plagued by corruption and cocaine trafficking - into chaos, and the first to complete his term without being overthrown.
The constitution provides for press freedom and there is some media diversity, says US NGO Freedom House. But it says journalists face harassment.
Private radio stations operate alongside the state broadcaster. A government newspaper publishes alongside non-state titles.
Some key date in Guinea-Bissau's history:
1446-47
- First Portuguese arrive; subsequently administered as part of the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands, the Guinea area becomes important in the slave-trade. Guinea-Bissau becomes a separate colony in the Portuguese Empire in 1879.
1974
- Independence following a guerrilla war.
1980
- Country's first president, Luis Cabral, is ousted in military coup led by Joao Bernardo Vieira; plans for unification with Cape Verde dropped. The overthrow is the first of many political coups that undermine the country's stability over the next four decades.
2006
- Guinea-Bissau soldiers battle Senegalese rebels along the southern border.
2006
- Guinea-Bissau appeals for international help to stop people-traffickers using its remote coastline to smuggle migrants, including Asians, to Europe.
2007
- Donors have one last opportunity to save Guinea-Bissau from chaos and to combat Latin American drug cartels, the UN and International Monetary Fund warn.
2010
- US names two top military officials as international drugs traffickers and freezes their US assets. EU announces it is ending mission to reform Guinea Bissau's security forces, saying lack of respect for rule of law is making this an impossible task.
2011
- EU suspends part of its aid to Guinea-Bissau because of concerns over governance and the rule of law. Several months later, thousands take to the streets to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior for his failure to curb rising food prices.
2012
- The UN Security Council expresses concern that drug trafficking has increased, and demands a return to constitutional rule.
2020
- Umaro Sissoco Embaló takes office as the first opposition candidate to win a presidential election.
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88fa68b1919f9451c91333559e3aa5de | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13495684 | Sudan: UN urges Khartoum to pullout from Abyei region | Sudan: UN urges Khartoum to pullout from Abyei region
UN Security Council envoys have urged north Sudan to "withdraw immediately" its troops from the contested Abyei region on the border with South Sudan.
The call was made by the UN diplomats who are on a tour of Sudan.
South Sudan said the Abyei takeover was an act of war, saying civilians and southern soldiers were killed.
South Sudan is due to become independent in July, but Abyei's status remains to be determined after a referendum on its future was shelved.
People in the southern capital of Juba are worried and there is a grim mood on the streets of the capital, the BBC's Peter Martell in South Sudan reports.
The north said it acted after 22 of its men were killed in a southern ambush earlier this week.
"The members of the Security Council call upon the government of Sudan to halt its military operation and withdraw immediately from Abyei town and its environs," the French ambassador to the UN, Gerard Araud, said in Khartoum.
"They condemn the escalatory military operation being undertaken by the Sudanese armed forces. This constitutes a serious violation of the CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005)," Mr Araud said.
He was speaking during a joint news conference with his Russian and US counterparts.
Separately, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and EU top diplomat Catherine Ashton condemned the violence in Abyei.
A southern military spokesman earlier told the BBC the north had attacked the area with 5,000 troops, killing civilians and southern soldiers.
Some 20,000 people, almost the whole population of the town, had fled, aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) told the BBC.
Spokesman Raphael Gorgeu said residents had moved to Agok, about 45km (28 miles) south of Abyei, and were fleeing further south.
He said 42 people wounded in the fighting in Abyei had been treated at a local MSF hospital.
Southern 'ambush' criticised
The seizure of Abyei followed two days of skirmishes, artillery fire and at least one air raid.
The BBC's James Copnall in Khartoum says that in a clear demonstration of who is now in charge of Abyei, President Omar al-Bashir issued a decree dismissing the region's administration.
Abyei had been governed by a joint body comprising northerners and southerners, led by a southerner.
Southern military spokesman Col Philip Aguer said the north had committed an aggression, and called for the international community to step in.
"If the international community do not intervene quickly to rescue the situation then this is a complete violation of the comprehensive peace agreement, a complete violation of the ceasefire, and it is a declaration of war by Khartoum," he told the BBC.
The north says it acted after 22 of their men were killed in a southern ambush on Thursday.
The UN said the northern troops who were ambushed were being escorted out of Abyei by UN peacekeepers.
UN officials described the incident as "a criminal attack" and the US called on South Sudan to "account" for the assault.
Washington said the attack was "in direct violation" of the agreement signed by the north and south in January to "remove all unauthorised forces" from Abyei.
South Sudanese forces denied responsibility for the incident.
Tension over Abyei - claimed by a southern group, the Dinka Ngok, and northern nomads, the Misseriya - has been rising since a referendum on its future scheduled for January was postponed.
Since then there have been fears clashes in Abyei could spark a new north-south war, which this latest incident will do nothing to dispel, our correspondent says.
Under the CPA deal, which ended 22 years of civil war, Abyei was granted special status and a joint north-south administration set up in 2008.
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2fdca70ee6d91b2f5e82d03f1563ef6d | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13656137 | Burkina Faso: Bloody end to Bobo Dioulasso mutiny | Burkina Faso: Bloody end to Bobo Dioulasso mutiny
At least seven people including a young girl have been killed in an exchange of fire as pro-government forces quelled a mutiny in Burkina Faso.
The deaths came as elite forces engaged the rioting mutineers for the first time, encircling them at their military base in second city Bobo Dioulasso.
Their intervention comes after several days of looting and shooting by the mutineers in the commercial centre.
Disgruntled soldiers have been protesting violently for higher wages.
President Blaise Compaore responded to the protests, which began in February, by promising them a range of benefits, and sacked his security chiefs in April.
The mutiny, along with demonstrations by trade unions and civil society groups against the escalating cost of living, was seen as the biggest challenge to Mr Compaore's rule since he took power in a coup 24 years ago.
Residents say calm has now returned to the city.
Justice Minister Jerome Traore, quoted by Reuters news agency, said 57 soldiers had been arrested, adding that 25 civilians and eight soldiers were wounded in the fighting.
Pro-Compaore forces arrived in the south-western city Bobo Dioulasso after the government promised to take measures "to re-establish the authority of the state".
The mayor of Bobo Dioulasso, Salia Sanou, said part of the market had been ransacked by the mutineers.
The former colonial power, France, said it remained "vigilant" about the situation in Burkina Faso, where many of its nationals lived.
It said Mr Compaore's government should enter into dialogue with all parties to pave the way for reforms and to restore order.
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d8ccc0470038c21c920df6c3484636a1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13785053 | Tripoli mortuary eyewitness: 'Haunted by Libya deaths' | Tripoli mortuary eyewitness: 'Haunted by Libya deaths'
Anti-government protests began in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on 15-16 February, but spread rapidly westwards, reaching the capital, Tripoli, on 20 February. Officials denied anyone had been injured in clashes between security forces and protesters. But a former orderly at a Tripoli hospital mortuary, who has fled to Tunisia, told the BBC's Pascale Harter what he saw:
Many young people went to protest in Green Square that day, and I believe almost no-one came back alive that night.
Between 600 and 700 people were killed. I know this because I carried the bodies into my hospital.
Each ambulance brought three or four dead people. And the ambulances just kept coming and going, like delivery vans dropping off goods.
Every one of Tripoli's ambulances - and we have a lot of them - was out on the roads, carrying dead bodies.
When the mortuary's refrigerators were full, we placed the bodies on tables and stretchers, or left them on the floor. It was the same at the other hospitals.
Col Gaddafi killed people who were demonstrating peacefully.
I know this because I saw it myself. I saw men in military uniform in pick-ups, their faces covered, shooting at people. It was like a scene from a horror film.
I think Col Gaddafi's forces were using anti-aircraft guns on people.
The people had gunshot wounds to their heads or chests. The bullets had exploded and some of the people had their heads blown open. I tried to pick up the pieces.
It was very confused at the hospital. We did not count the number of dead or register them. We just dropped the dead bodies and sent the wounded into surgery. No-one was taking down names or counting.
Also, the bodies were coming in without identity cards on them. But in one man's pocket I found a receipt with his name on it so I wrote it down.
The ambulances picked up all the dead and wounded they could, but then Col Gaddafi's forces started shooting at them.
I told one ambulance driver to fetch more wounded, but he said: "I don't want to die", and just threw down his keys down and walked away.
A military commander brought in a soldier in who had been shot in the stomach. He did not trust the doctors to operate, so he told another soldier to stay with the wounded man.
When the three of them came into the hospital the families of the protesters who had been killed or injured started chanting: "Down with Gaddafi."
The commander started firing his gun at the ceiling and everyone dropped to the floor.
A few days later, soldiers came and took the dead and injured.
They pulled off the patients' oxygen masks, yanked off the wires connected to their monitors, pulled out the drips and tubes, and took them away.
Some of them were sedated and were not conscious. Even the ones who were not did not have the chance to scream. The soldiers just piled them up with the dead in Toyota Land Cruisers and drove away.
None of the hospital staff dared speak out at all. What could we do? If I had done anything, I would have been piled up with the dead too.
We never found out what happened to the people taken by Col Gaddafi's forces. No-one had the courage to ask.
The next day, the government brought a Libyan state television crew to interview our doctors. They said: "No, there are no injured at the hospital, not even a person who has fallen off a ladder."
Before they took the dead, my colleague told me to take pictures of them so that their families would still be able to know what happened.
My phone did not have a camera so he gave me his. I took the keys to the mortuary and I took the pictures. Afterwards, I gave the phone back to him.
A few days later I heard he was caught by the police. I do not know what they did with him.
When I heard, I ran away. I left Tripoli and went to join the revolutionaries in Zawiya. They helped me get to Tunisia through the desert.
I am now taking pills that allow me to fall asleep straight away. But whenever I am awake, I am haunted by images of Hajj Basset. He is always around - I even see him on the street.
Hajj Basset was the man who had a receipt in his pocket bearing his name. His head was blown apart. When we lifted him from the stretcher, some of his head fell away and bits of his brain spilt on the floor. I picked them up and tried to put his head back together afterwards.
He was about 45 years old. He was not a terrorist or taking the hallucinogenic drugs which Col Gaddafi claims the protesters were taking.
The receipt in his pocket was from a DIY shop.
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63bc47d7a6721320abd9223a1d585f9d | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13830470 | Somalia: PM Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed resigns | Somalia: PM Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed resigns
Somalia's prime minister says he has resigned, following an agreement between the president and parliament to remove him from office.
Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed had initially refused to step down, but will now go "in the interest of the Somali people".
His removal was part of a UN-backed deal that extends the mandates of the president, the speaker and deputies to August 2012.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since 1991.
Islamist militants control large parts of southern and central Somalia.
Mr Mohamed, also known as "Farmajo" said: "Considering the interest of the Somali people and the current situation in Somalia, I have decided to leave my office.
"I would like to thank my cabinet who have done a lot to help improve security and standards of governance in Somalia."
Last week, Mr Mohamed told the BBC he would not quit because only parliament had the power to oust him.
He said he had the support of the Somali people to stay in office.
There were protests in the capital, Mogadishu, rejecting the deal to remove the prime minister.
Under the deal signed in Uganda, the mandates of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden and the deputies were extended until 20 August 2012, when new elections will be organised.
The president and the speaker had been in conflict over what would happen when the current administration's mandate runs out in August.
Mr Aden had said he could not work with Mr Mohamed and his departure was a condition of the deal.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since the fall of the Siad Bare regime in 1991, as rival factions constantly fight for power.
Foreign donors have been pushing rival factions to resolve their differences, and focus on defeating the Islamist threat.
The US believes that Somalia is a haven for al-Qaeda activists in East Africa, and has carried out several air strikes in the country to kill militants.
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d0ed0d6a9d2c9160d8ffd219d637503e | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13881370 | Mali country profile | Mali country profile
Once home to several pre-colonial empires, the landlocked, arid West African country of Mali is one of the largest on the continent. For centuries, its northern city of Timbuktu was a key regional trading post and centre of Islamic culture.
But this prominence has long since faded.
After independence from France in 1960, Mali suffered droughts, rebellions, a coup and 23 years of military dictatorship until democratic elections in 1992.
In 2013, France intervened militarily upon the government's request following the capture of the town of Konna and its troops overran Islamist strongholds.
Authorities agreed a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire with Tuareg separatists in 2015, but parts of the country remain tense, with Tuareg rebels sporadically active.
Meanwhile, a jihadist insurgency in Mali's north and central regions continues.
Mali is renowned worldwide for having produced some of the stars of African music, most notably Salif Keita.
Interim President: Bah Ndaw
The military council that seized power in August 2020 named former army officer Bah Ndaw as interim president of Mali the following month.
Coup leader Colonel Assimi Goita will serve as his deputy.
Mr Ndaw, a retired colonel-major, served as defence minister under ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.
West African leaders have demanded the appointment of an interim president to oversee a planned 18-month-long transition to elections.
Mali has struggled with mass protests over corruption, electoral probity, and a jihadist insurgency that has made much of the north and east ungovernable.
President Keita, who took office in September 2013, proved unable to unify the country or face down the insurgency.
The media environment in Bamako and the south is relatively open, but the presence of armed militant groups in the north poses dangers for media workers, says Freedom House.
Radio is the leading medium. There are hundreds of stations, run by the state as well as by private operators.
Some key dates in Mali's history:
11th century
- Empire of Mali becomes dominant force in the upper Niger basin.
14th-15th centuries
- Decline of the Empire of Mali, which loses dominance of the gold trade to the Songhai Empire.
Late 16th century
- Moroccans defeat the Songhai, make Timbuktu their capital and rule until their decline in the 18th century.
1898
- France completes conquest of Mali, then called French Sudan.
1960
- Mali becomes independent with Modibo Keita as president. It becomes a one-party, socialist state.
2012
- Coup after which Islamist fighters capture several towns. France intervenes militarily and recaptures key towns from the rebels.
2015
- November - Islamist gunmen attack the Radisson Blu hotel in the capital Bamako.
2018
- Ibrahim Boubacar Keita re-elected for a second term as president.
2020-
Military coup ousts President Keita.
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016268d5d01968241c05de5b6232c0e2 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13890720 | Mozambique profile - Timeline | Mozambique profile - Timeline
3rd century
- Iron Age Bantu-speaking tribes move into area from west-central Africa.
11th century
- Shona empire develops between Limpopo and Zambezi rivers.
1498
- Portuguese expedition led by explorer Vasco da Gama drops anchor off Mozambican coast.
16-17th centuries
- Portuguese venture into interior. Following military campaigns, colonists set up trading posts and mining enterprises and parcel-out land to European settlers.
18th-19th centuries
- Mozambique becomes major slave-trading centre.
1842
- Portugal outlaws slave trade from Mozambique, but clandestine trade continues for decades.
1878
- Portugal leases large tracts of territory to trading companies, who use conscript African labour to further their interests and build infrastructure.
1932
- Portugal breaks up trading companies and imposes direct rule over colony.
1950s-60s
- Colonial economy thrives, attracting thousands of Portuguese settlers.
1962
- Exiled activists form Mozambique Liberation Front - Frelimo - headed by Eduardo Mondlane.
1964
- Frelimo forces begin war of independence. Guerrilla tactics frustrate Portuguese and Frelimo take control of much of north.
1974
- Military coup in Portugal, new government agrees independence with Frelimo. More than 250,000 Portuguese inhabitants leave.
1975
- Mozambique becomes independent under Frelimo one-party rule of President Samora Machel.
1976
- Renamo anti-Frelimo group aided by Rhodesia and later South Africa.
1977
- Frelimo adopts Marxist-Leninism.
1986
- President Machel is killed in an air crash. Joaquim Chissano becomes president.
1989
- Frelimo renounces Marxist-Leninism as Soviet power collapses.
1990
- Government amends the constitution to allow a multi-party political system.
1992
- President Chissano and Renamo leader Afonso Dhaklama sign peace deal in Rome.
1995
- Mozambique joins Commonwealth.
2005
February - Frelimo's Armando Guebuza inaugurated as president after defeating Afonso Dhlakama in November presidential poll.
2006
July - The World Bank cancels most of Mozambique's debt under a plan promoted by the G8 nations.
2011
October - Italian energy company Eni says it's made a giant gas discovery off the coast of Cabo Delgado Province in the north.
2014
January - Hundreds flee renewed fighting between government forces and Renamo rebels in the south district of Homoine.
2014
October - The ruling Frelimo party and its candidate Filipe Nyusi win presidential and legislative elections after Renamo signs truce.
2017
January-August - President Nyusi and Renamo leader Dhlakama finally end conflict.
2017
November - Jihadist insurgency begins in Cabo Delgado Province in the north.
2019
March - Cyclone Idai causes extensive flooding and loss of life in Sofala Province.
2020
January - President Nyusi inaugurated after winning re-election for final five-year term.
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ff736c65b9ff80860e62194145128ca1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13898754 | Libya rebels 'in secret talks' with Tripoli underground | Libya rebels 'in secret talks' with Tripoli underground
The Libyan rebels in the east are in close contact with an underground network of opponents of Col Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli, the BBC has learnt.
A member of the rebels' National Transitional Council (NTC) in Benghazi revealed they were holding secret talks to prepare for the regime's fall.
The member said the talks were being held via Skype and satellite phones.
The rebels want to gauge the impact of pressure from Nato air strikes and shortages on morale in Tripoli.
Secondly, they want to involve the Tripoli underground opposition in their general strategy for ousting Col Gaddafi, so that if anyone is emboldened to take to the streets again in the capital it is woven into a bigger plan.
They call them the "Tripoli Five" - the five members of the NTC who, from their stronghold of Benghazi, every night contact the network of more than 100 people in Tripoli.
They believe they have found a way to bypass attempts by the Gaddafi regime to monitor them.
NTC member Alamin Belhaj says he believes direct communications through Skype and satellite phones are secure "because no-one has been arrested yet".
"We talk for about an hour every night. The network covers all sectors of society and they tell us what their friends are thinking, or what's being said in mosques and on the streets."
Mr Belhaj is well placed to help run the clandestine network. For 30 years he was in the opposition to Col Gaddafi, as a leading member of the once-banned Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, based first in Tripoli and then in exile in Manchester.
"We have very good experience of working underground. In 30 years we were never infiltrated," he says.
Now he has joined the rebel task force, which is trying to prepare Tripoli for the day when Col Gaddafi falls.
Mr Belhaj thinks that there are signs that those opposed to the Libyan leader are growing less fearful and that the regime is weakening. He cites reports from government workers, who say they have turned up to work and found the officials in charge have vanished.
He says others report that the number of pro-Gaddafi militia on street patrols seems to be declining, as though they have been pulled off for duties elsewhere.
"We are 100% sure there will be an uprising in Tripoli, the only thing is the timing," says Mr Belhaj.
What the rebel leadership does not want is a repeat of the pattern that followed the liberation of Benghazi in late February.
Then, when people staged anti-Gaddafi demonstrations in Tripoli, their protests were small, unco-ordinated and easily crushed.
This time the rebel leadership hopes that their contacts with the Tripoli underground will ensure better co-ordination, so that a planned military push against Gaddafi troops from the south, west and east will be matched by an insurgency from within the capital, which - they hope - his loyal forces will be too thinly stretched to put down.
"We will all do it together," says Mr Belhaj.
But there is another task for the Tripoli underground network - laying plans to try to avoid a bloodbath if and when the regime falls.
"We believe Gaddafi is planning something in case he goes," says Mr Belhaj.
"And we are afraid of the [pro-Gaddafi] revolutionary committees and the part of the security services that protect the regime. We must have a comprehensive plan to prepare for the worst-case scenario of what might happen if he loses power."
So, he says, the rebels are reaching out to professionals and technocrats, especially police and army officers who are apparently still loyal to Col Gaddafi, but who have secretly assured the rebels that they will swap sides and take orders from the NTC if he goes.
In this way the rebel leadership hopes to avoid looting, sabotage and general mayhem in the city.
"Many people in the army and police tell us that now they are with Gaddafi, but they will be with us when the moment comes. That's the clear message they've giving us," says Mr Belhaj.
None of this is easily verified. Much could be wishful thinking or even pure propaganda.
Some rebel leaders in Benghazi confirmed the general gist of what is apparently being planned. Others were tight-lipped, citing national security considerations.
So why, I asked Mr Belhaj, was he willing to share with the world through the BBC all these apparently clandestine details about what the NTC is hoping and planning?
"Because the biggest danger for us is failing to keep people informed," he answered.
"People are beginning to ask questions about what we in the NTC are doing. We need to start preparing them for when the regime falls."
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8f78495de453cc09c6c25b172da94cc5 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13944550 | Horn of Africa sees 'worst drought in 60 years' | Horn of Africa sees 'worst drought in 60 years'
Some parts of the Horn of Africa have been hit by the worst drought in 60 years, the UN says.
More than 10 million people are thought to be affected across the region.
The UN now classifies large areas of Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya as a crisis or an emergency.
Charity Save the Children says drought and war in Somalia has led to unprecedented numbers fleeing across the border into Kenya, with about 1,300 people arriving every day.
Three camps at Dadaab, just inside Kenya, are home to well over 350,000 people, but they were built to hold just 90,000 and are severely overcrowded.
A prolonged failure of rains, which began in late 2010, is now taking its toll.
The UN's Office for the Co-Ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) warns that the situation is continuing to deteriorate, and the number of people in need will continue to increase.
The numbers now affected are huge, Ohca says: 3.2m in Ethiopia, 3.2m in Kenya, 2.6m in Somalia and more than 100,000 in Djibouti.
Every month during 2011, about 15,000 Somalis have fled their country, arriving in Kenya and Ethiopia, according to Ocha.
While conflict has been a fact of life for them for years, it is the drought that has brought them to breaking point. Many have walked for days, are exhausted, in poor health, desperate for food and water.
Nearly one third of all children in the Juba region of Somalia are acutely malnourished, while in parts of Ethiopia the figure is even higher, the UN research says. Parts of Uganda are also suffering from the drought.
The UN refugee agency is dealing with the exodus.
A new refugee camp primarily for Somalis was opened at Kobe in Ethiopia last Friday, near an existing camp at Melkadida.
More than 3,500 refugees and their belongings were moved there over the weekend.
The UNHCR says this is the sixth camp for Somalis in Ethiopia, which is currently housing some 130,000 displaced people.
Food prices have risen substantially across the region, pushing many moderately poor households over the edge.
The price of grain in affected areas in Kenya is 30-80% above average.
The spokeswoman for Ocha, Elizabeth Byrs, said appeals for Somalia and Kenya, each about $525m (£328m), are barely 50% funded, while a $30m appeal for Djibouti has raised just 30% of the needed funds.
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4a1a052917c1f9280d53c1c17847f639 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13949550 | Nigeria country profile | Nigeria country profile
After lurching from one military coup to another, Nigeria now has an elected leadership.
But the government faces the growing challenge of preventing Africa's most populous country from breaking apart along ethnic and religious lines.
Thousands of people have died over the past few years in attacks led by jihadists in the north-east.
Separatist aspirations have also been growing, and the imposition of Islamic law in several northern states has embedded divisions and caused thousands of Christians to flee.
Nigeria's insecurity has added to its economic woes, hindering foreign investment.
The former British colony is one of the world's largest oil producers, but few Nigerians, including those in oil-producing areas, have benefited.
President: Muhammadu Buhari
A former military ruler, Muhammadu Buhari swept to an historic election victory in March 2015 when he became the first opposition candidate to win a Nigerian presidential poll.
After helping oust elected President Shehu Shagari in 1983, the then Major-General Buhari sought to combat crime and corruption, but was also accused of serious rights abuses.
In 1985, he was overthrown by Gen Ibrahim Babangida.
Mr Buhari has now distanced himself from military rule, promising to respect democracy and govern as a civilian leader.
Nigeria is one of Africa's biggest media markets. There are hundreds of radio stations and terrestrial TV networks, as well as cable and satellite platforms.
Reporters Without Borders says journalists face threats and violence in the course of their work.
Many millions of Nigerians are online, and WhatsApp and Facebook are leading social platforms.
Read full media profile
Some key dates in Nigeria's history:
16-18th centuries
- Slave trade sees Nigerians forcibly sent to the Americas to work on plantations.
1850s
- Britain establishes presence, which it consolidates over the next 70 years as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. In 1922, part of former German colony Kamerun is added under a League of Nations mandate.
1960
- Independence, with Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa leading a coalition government. He is killed in a coup in 1966.
1967
- Three eastern states secede as the Republic of Biafra, sparking a bloody three-year civil war.
1983
- Major-General Muhammadu Buhari seizes power in a bloodless coup, ushering in a period of political instability capped by the 1999 presidential and parliamentary elections.
2000
- Adoption of Islamic law by several northern states in the face of opposition from Christians.
2009
- Boko Haram jihadists launch a campaign of violence that spreads to neighbouring countries. One high-profile incident involves the kidnapping of 200 school girls in 2014.
2015
- Muhammadu Buhari wins presidential election - first opposition candidate to do so.
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b7457032434d778e34a706341645e79b | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14028584 | Cameroon petrol smugglers die in Dembo explosion | Cameroon petrol smugglers die in Dembo explosion
Six petrol smugglers in Cameroon have died after a truck loaded with illegal fuel exploded in the northern town of Dembo, which borders Nigeria.
The fire happened at 2200 local time (2100 GMT) just after the vehicle had crossed over the border.
An eyewitness told the BBC he had seen the charred remains of six bodies, including the driver.
Nigeria's government heavily subsidises fuel, making it profitable for smugglers to take it into Cameroon.
It is not clear what caused the explosion, but such accidents are not uncommon.
Last month, Cameroon banned all night-time public transport on roads that are often not tarred to curb accidents caused by heavy drinking.
The BBC's Randy Joe Sa'ah in the capital, Yaounde, says Nigerian fuel, popularly known as "zoa-zoa", is sold everywhere across the northern region of the country.
It is cheaper and more readily available in the regional capital Garoua than legal fuel refined in southern Cameroon, he says.
The illegal trade is flourishing and attracts many of the region's unemployed young people, our reporter says.
Haman Oumar, the government officer in charge of the north's commerce, says many children drop out of school to go into the business.
Our reporter says some young people travel across the border on their bicycles to collect canisters of petrol.
The District Officer for Benue, Zang III, says the incident in Dembo, 35km (about 20 miles) north-west of Garoua, clearly illustrates why the war against fuel smuggling must be won.
He launched a campaign to stop the trade last November.
But the smugglers say the government relies on the illicit business for income because custom duties are still paid on the imports, even though they are illegal.
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eea813b3b2afa4cf4fc3c1aeacadc1e8 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14093756 | Senegal profile - Leaders | Senegal profile - Leaders
President: Macky Sall
Macky Sall won presidential elections in March 2012, replacing President Abdoulaye Wade, who controversially ran for a third term in office.
A former close associate of his predecessor, Mr Sall broke away in 2008 to form his own opposition party.
He challenged Mr Wade for the presidency in March 2012, beating him in the second round after winning the support of other opposition parties.
Mr Sall's coalition won a landslide majority in legislative elections four months after he was elected, amid widespread popular discontent with corruption under Mr Wade.
On coming to power, Mr Sall appointed a government that included world-renowned singer Youssou Ndour as tourism minister.
A geological engineer born in 1961, Mr Sall served as prime minister then speaker of parliament under President Wade, until they came into conflict over the political role of the president's son, Karim, whereupon Mr Sall was forced out of the governing Democratic Party and his post as speaker.
Mr Sall returned to his political base in the town of Fatick, where he was re-elected mayor and built up support for his eventually successful presidential bid.
In 2015, Karim Wade was found guilty of illicit enrichment while he was a minister during his father's presidency, in what critics called a politically motivated case aimed at stamping out opposition. Mr Wade was pardoned the following year, and left the country.
Mr Sall won approval at a 2016 referendum to cut the presidential term from seven years to five and limit the number of consecutive terms a president can serve to two. This pledge helped to win him the endorsement of other candidates in the run-off against President Wade.
Senegal has a lively political scene, with parties competing across ethnic, religious and ideological lines.
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90a2927138d2ff4e49687f4e6b59bd7d | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14095300 | Sudan profile - Timeline | Sudan profile - Timeline
A chronology of key events:
1881
- Revolt against the Ottoman-Egyptian administration.
1899-1955
- Sudan passes into joint British-Egyptian rule.
1956
- Sudan becomes independent.
1958
- General Ibrahim Abboud leads military coup against the civilian government elected earlier in the year
1962
- Civil war begins in the south, led by the Anya Nya movement.
1964
- The "October Revolution" overthrows Abboud and an Islamist-led government is established
1969
- Jaafar Numeiri leads military coup.
1971
- Sudanese Communist Party leaders executed after short-lived coup against Mr Numeiri.
1972
- Under the Addis Ababa peace agreement between the government and the Anya Nya, the south becomes a self-governing region.
1978
- Oil discovered in Bentiu in southern Sudan.
1983
- Civil war breaks out again in the south involving government forces and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), led by John Garang.
1983
- President Numeiri declares the introduction of Sharia Islamic law.
1985
- After widespread popular unrest Mr Numeiri is deposed by a Transitional Military Council.
1986
- Coalition government formed after elections, with Sadiq al-Mahdi as prime minister.
1989
- National Salvation Revolution takes over in military coup.
1993
- General Omar al-Bashir is appointed president.
1995
- Egyptian President Mubarak accuses Sudan of being involved in attempt to assassinate him in Addis Ababa.
1998
- US launches missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, alleging that it was making materials for chemical weapons.
1998
- New constitution endorsed by over 96% of voters in referendum.
1999
- President Bashir dissolves the National Assembly and declares a state of emergency following a power struggle with parliamentary speaker, Hassan al-Turabi.
1999
- Sudan begins to export oil.
Southern peace, Darfur crisis
2002
- Machakos Protocol talks in Kenya lead to breakthrough agreement with southern rebels on ending civil war. Provide for south to seek self-determination after six years.
2004
January - Army moves to quell rebel uprising in western region of Darfur; hundreds of thousands of refugees flee to neighbouring Chad.
Pro-government Arab Janjaweed militias carry out systematic killings of non-Arab villagers in Darfur.
2004
March - Army officers and opposition politicians, including Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi, are detained over an alleged coup plot.
2004
September - US Secretary of State Colin Powell describes Darfur killings as genocide.
2005
January - Government and southern rebels sign a peace deal.
2005
March - UN Security Council authorises sanctions against those who violate ceasefire in Darfur. Council also votes to refer those accused of war crimes in Darfur to International Criminal Court.
2005
June - Government and exiled opposition grouping - National Democratic Alliance (NDA) - sign reconciliation deal allowing NDA into power-sharing administration.
President Bashir frees Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi.
2005
July - Former southern rebel leader John Garang is sworn in as first vice-president, new constitution gives large degree of autonomy to south.
2005
August - John Garang killed in plane crash, succeeded by Salva Kiir.
2006
May - Khartoum government and the main rebel faction in Darfur, the Sudan Liberation Movement, sign a peace accord. Two smaller rebel groups reject the deal. Fighting continues.
2007
July - UN Security Council approves a resolution authorising a 26,000-strong force for Darfur. Sudan says it will co-operate with the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (Unamid).
2008
May - Tension increases between Sudan and Chad after Darfur rebel group mounts raid on Omdurman, Khartoum's twin city across the Nile. Sudan accuses Chad of involvement and breaks off diplomatic relations.
Intense fighting breaks out between northern and southern forces in disputed oil-rich town of Abyei. President Bashir and southern leader Salva Kiir agree to seek international arbitration to resolve dispute over Abyei.
Bashir arrest warrant
2009
March - The International Criminal Court in The Hague issues an arrest warrant for President Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
2009
July - North and south Sudan say they accept ruling by arbitration court in The Hague shrinking disputed Abyei region and placing the major Heglig oil field in the north.
2009
December - Leaders of North and South reach deal on terms of referendum on independence due in South by 2011.
2010
Feb-March - The Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) main Darfur rebel movement signs a peace accord with the government, prompting President Bashir to declare the Darfur war over. But failure to agree specifics and continuing clashes with smaller rebel groups endanger the deal.
2010
April - President Bashir gains new term in first contested presidential polls since 1986.
2010
July - International Criminal Court issues second arrest warrant for President al-Bashir - this time on charges of genocide.
2010
August - Mr Bashir tests ICC arrest warrant by visiting Kenya, an ICC signatory. The Kenyan government refuses to enforce the warrant. He later ignores South African court order not to leave country in 2015.
2011
July - South Sudan gains independence after January popular vote, but some border areas remain in dispute.
2011
December - Government forces kill key Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim.
2012
May - Sudan pledges to pull its troops out of the border region of Abyei, which is also claimed by South Sudan, as bilateral peace talks resume.
2012
June - Protests in Khartoum against austerity measures after government cuts fuel and other subsidies in response to the drop in oil revenue after the independence of South Sudan.
2013
March - Sudan and South Sudan agree to resume pumping oil, ending a shutdown caused by a dispute over fees more than a year earlier, and to withdraw troops from their borders to create a demilitarised zone.
2013
September - Another wave of demonstrations over subsidies cuts. Scores of people die in clashes.
2013
October - Dissident members of ruling National Congress Party threaten split to reach out to secularists and leftists.
2013
December - President Bashir drops long-time ally and first vice president Ali Osman Taha from the cabinet in a major shake-up.
2014
May - A court in Khartoum prompts an international outcry by sentencing a pregnant woman born to a Muslim father but raised as a Christian to death for apostasy after failing to recant her Christianity.
2014
December - The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court halts investigations into war crimes in Darfur for lack of support from the UN Security Council.
2015
April - President Bashir is re-elected for another five year term. He wins nearly 95 percent of the vote in a poll marked by low turnout and boycotted by most opposition parties.
2016
November-December - Street and stay-at-home protests at IMF-prompted price hikes for basic goods. Government disperses protests, arrests opposition politicians, bans media coverage.
2017
October - US announces partial lifting of sanctions.
2018
January - Protests against bread price rises after government removed subsidies. These escalate into mass protests in December.
2019
February - President Bashir declares state of emergency and sacks cabinet and regional governors in bid to end weeks of protests against his rule, in which up to 40 people died.
2019
April - Military topples President Bashir in a coup, begins talks with opposition on transition to democracy.
2019
September - A new government takes office under Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok as part of a three-year power-sharing agreement between the military, civilian representatives and protest groups.
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392d5250364f8b07d6d2f616743a8ca9 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14107241 | Tunisia country profile | Tunisia country profile
Home of the ancient city of Carthage, Tunisia was once an important player in the Mediterranean, thanks to its location in the centre of North Africa, close to vital shipping routes.
The Romans, Arabs, Ottoman Turks and French realised its strategic significance, making it a hub for control over the region.
French colonial rule ended in 1956, and Tunisia was led for three decades by Habib Bourguiba, who advanced secular ideas, foremost of which was the emancipation of women.
Tunisia is more prosperous than its neighbours. Agriculture employs a large part of the workforce and tourism is a key sector.
Mass protests unseated President Ben Ali in 2011 - the first of a series of popular uprisings to sweep the region.
The country's transition has been relatively peaceful, but secular Tunisians, especially women, are worried about the growing influence of ultra-conservative Islamists.
And there is a mounting challenge posed by Islamist militants who claimed responsibility for attacks in 2015 in which 60 people were killed, most of them foreigners.
President: Kais Saied
Retired law professor Kais Saied won a landslide victory over media mogul Nabil Karoui in the October 2019 presidential election run-off.
Mr Saied, who was 61 when elected, campaigned on an anti-corruption platform, and appealed directly to young voters.
He has faced considerable criticism for his conservative views on homosexuality, women's rights and capital punishment, which was suspended in 1994.
The previous president, Beji Caid Essebsi, died in office in July, after winning the country's first free presidential election in December 2014.
Parliament approved a new government led by Hichem Mechichi in September 2020, the third administration since elections the previous October.
Mr Mechichi's ministers are technocrats free of affiliation to political parties, tasked with reforming public finances at a time of economic crisis and political instability.
The new prime minister, a lawyer by training, served as interior minister in the outgoing government.
The Tunisian media now enjoy greater freedom than before the 2011 popular revolt.
Social media played a key role in the uprising.
Some key dates in Tunisia's history:
Circa 1100 BC
- Phoenicians settle the north African coast. The city of Carthage, near the site of present-day Tunis, becomes a naval power.
146 BC
- Carthage falls to the Romans.
600s
- Arabs conquer the territory of present-day Tunisia.
909
- Berbers wrest the region from the Arabs.
1600s
- Tunisia becomes part of the Turkish Ottoman empire, but has a high degree of autonomy.
1881
- French troops occupy Tunis. France controls economic and foreign affairs; Tunisia is a French protectorate from 1883.
1956
- Tunisia becomes independent with Habib Bourguiba as prime minister, monarchy is abolished and Tunisia becomes a republic the following year.
1987
- 'Palace coup': Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali has President Bourguiba declared mentally unfit to rule and takes power himself.
2011
- Mass protests drive President Ben Ali into exile, inspiring other popular uprisings collectively known as the "Arab Spring".
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91f3c14e803a3592a0b3a2071f788dcb | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14118852?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D | Algeria country profile | Algeria country profile
Algeria, a gateway between Africa and Europe, has been battered by violence over the past half-century.
There are conflicting reports about the death toll during the war against France for independence in the 1950s and early 60s. French historians estimate that up to 400,000 Algerians were killed, while the Algerian government says more than one million people died.
The country later endured a brutal internal conflict after when elections that Islamists appeared certain to win were cancelled in 1992; a low-level Islamist insurgency still affects Algeria.
The Sahara desert covers more than four-fifths of the land. Algeria is the continent's biggest country, and is the world's 10th largest.
Oil and gas reserves were discovered there in the 1950s, but most Algerians live along the northern coast.
Abdelmadjid Tebboune won the December 2019 presidential election from a field candidates all associated with the era of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the long-serving head of state forced out of office by mass protests in April.
The opposition boycotted the election, demanding a clean sweep of the military-dominated elite and a sustained campaign against corruption.
Mr Tebboune has pledged to carry out the necessary reforms, but the former civil servant faces a serious challenge in winning over public trust.
Algeria has a lively private press but the state broadcaster avoids criticism of the government.
Recent legislation allows several privately-owned TV stations to operate from Algerian soil, but none of them are opposition-leaning.
Some key dates in Algeria's history:
1830
- France seizes Algiers, ending Algeria's three centuries as an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire.
1939-1945
- The Collapse of France and the Anglo-American occupation of North Africa during Second World War encourages hopes for independence.
1945
- Pro-independence demonstrations in Setif. Thousands are killed in suppression of ensuing unrest.
1954-1962
- Algerian War of Independence.
1962
- Independence.
1976
- Algerian, Moroccan armies clash over Western Sahara.
1989
- New constitution removes the one-party state and moves country away from socialism to western capitalism.
1991-1999
- Civil war pitting Islamists against the government.
1999
- Abdelaziz Bouteflika becomes president, introduces national reconciliation policy.
2019
April - President Bouteflika announces he will step down after street protests.
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1656a345f7cb1bc453f693fc1c87b554 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14164517 | US recognises Libyan rebel TNC as legitimate authority | US recognises Libyan rebel TNC as legitimate authority
The United States has recognised the Libyan opposition as the country's "legitimate governing authority".
The move means billions of dollars of Libyan assets frozen in US banks could be released to the rebels.
The decision was announced by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a diplomatic meeting in Istanbul.
Western and Arab members of the Libya Contact Group are drawing up a plan to end hostilities, which will be presented to Col Muammar Gaddafi.
"The United States views the Gaddafi regime as no longer having any legitimate authority in Libya," Mrs Clinton said.
"And so I am announcing today that, until an interim authority is in place, the United States will recognise the TNC [Transitional National Council] as the legitimate governing authority for Libya, and we will deal with it on that basis."
She added: "The TNC has offered important assurances today, including the promise to pursue a process of democratic reform that is inclusive both geographically and politically."
The TNC said it "expressed its gratitude and respect to the people of the United States", which it called "the protector and promoter of democracy and freedom across the world".
In Istanbul, other foreign ministers said the whole contact group - including more than 30 Western and Arab countries - agreed to recognise the rebels.
Many of them have already individually recognised the TNC.
Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the decision left Col Gaddafi "no other option" but to leave power.
However, Col Gaddafi swiftly rejected the move.
Addressing a televised rally in the town of Zlitan, he said: "Trample on those recognitions, trample them under your feet... They are worthless."
Mr Frattini said the UN special envoy to Libya, Abdul Elah al-Khatib, would take the contact group's ceasefire proposals to the Libyan leadership, and negotiate on their behalf.
A statement released by the group said Col Gaddafi "must leave power according to defined steps to be publicly announced," and called for "the formation of an interim government to ensure a smooth and peaceful transition of power".
The meeting was also expected to explore measures to increase the pressure on the Libyan regime, such as constraining government broadcasting. It was also to look at a report on the TNC's plans for progress to democracy.
Representatives of the Benghazi-based TNC were at the meeting, but invitations to China and Russia were both declined.
The conflict in Libya appears to be in a protracted stalemate. Rebels are holding eastern Libya and pockets in the west.
Col Gaddafi remains entrenched in the capital Tripoli, despite a Nato bombing campaign of more than 6,000 sorties against regime forces.
International sanctions have also been imposed and international arrest warrants issued against leading figures in the Libyan regime.
In Tripoli, Col Gaddafi's government has been holding crisis talks over the supply of fuel to the country.
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4ea5fe6602edc6e6d68ebb9185436d47 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14246764 | Somali Islamists maintain aid ban and deny famine | Somali Islamists maintain aid ban and deny famine
Somalia's al-Shabab Islamists have denied lifting their ban on some Western aid agencies and say UN reports of famine are "sheer propaganda".
The UN on Wednesday said that parts of Somalia were suffering a famine after the worst drought in 60 years.
A spokesman for al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaeda and controls much of the country, accused the banned groups of being political.
But the UN insists famine exists and it will continue its aid efforts.
Most Western aid agencies quit Somalia in 2009 following al-Shabab's threats, though some say they have managed to continue operating through local partners.
Some 10 million people are said to need food aid across East Africa but Somalia is by far the worst-affected country, as there is no national government to co-ordinate aid after two decades of fighting.
Thousands of people are fleeing areas under al-Shabab control to camps set up in areas of the capital controlled by the weak interim government, which is battling the Islamist insurgents.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) was one of those banned.
It says it is planning to airlift food into the capital, Mogadishu, in the coming days to help the thousands of malnourished children who face starvation in the country.
"We are absolutely adamant that there are famine conditions in two regions of south Somalia," WFP's Africa spokesman David Orr told the BBC.
"We've seen the evidence of the emergency in the faces and wasted limbs of the malnourished children who are being forced to trek out of the famine zone, sometimes for days and for weeks."
WFP spokesperson Emilia Casella said the agency would continue to operate where it was possible to do so.
"Al-Shabab is not a monolithic organisation. It's important to note that we're working where we can; we're making plans to work where it's feasible," she told AFP news agency.
The UN's children's agency Unicef said it was increasingly relying on its local partners but had been able to continue its operations.
"At the moment what we are trying to do is to look at how we can scale up our programmes and get more supplementary and therapeutic food into these area where we have the extreme starvation going on," spokeswoman Shantha Bloeman told the BBC.
"Yes, WFP had serious restrictions on it but as far as our operations are concerned we have been operating throughout."
The two districts where a famine has been declared - Bakool and Lower Shabelle - are under al-Shabab control and aid agencies have been wary of resuming activities there amid fears for the safety of their staff.
Al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage earlier this month announced that aid agencies, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, would be allowed back into Somalia as long as they had "no hidden agenda".
This had prompted the US to say it was lifting its ban on allowing its food relief into areas controlled by al-Shabab, which it calls a terrorist group.
However, Mr Rage told journalists in Mogadishu on Thursday night: "The agencies we banned are still banned. The agencies were involved in political activities."
He admitted there was a drought but said reports of a famine were "utter nonsense, 100% baseless and sheer propaganda.
"There is drought in Somalia and shortage of rain but it is not as bad as they put it."
Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group think-tank, told Reuters news agency that al-Shabab were trying to avoid being "seen as people who oversaw a large-scale humanitarian disaster".
BBC Somali editor Yusuf Garaad Omar says food aid - as supplied by WFP - is sensitive for al-Shabab as it would like to ensure it goes to regions it controls, rather than government areas.
He also says that a lot of money can be made from transporting food. Helping women and children - the work Unicef does - is less of an issue, he says.
Mr Orr said the situation had been made much worse for many people by the restrictions on access for aid agencies.
"We are appealing for access as humanitarian aid workers. People, as I have said, are starving to death in there. This is a life and death situation," he told the BBC.
"We wouldn't be in this situation had the humanitarian community had access.
"We are appealing to all parties who have an interest in this situation to allow us to go in there and to get the aid in, in as fast and efficient a manner as possible."
More than 166,000 desperate Somalis are estimated to have fled their country to neighbouring Kenya or Ethiopia in recent months.
On Wednesday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said $300m (£184m) was needed in the next two months to provide an adequate response to the areas affected by famine.
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bf871a027933ffdf46735b1c028b02e9 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14543048 | Zimbabwe ex-army chief Solomon Mujuru dies in farm fire | Zimbabwe ex-army chief Solomon Mujuru dies in farm fire
Zimbabwe's ex-military chief Solomon Mujuru has died in a fire at his farm, the state security minister has said.
Mr Mujuru, 62, was one of Zimbabwe's most senior politicians and married to Vice-President Joice Mujuru.
Analysts say his death is likely to intensify turmoil in President Robert Mugabe's party over the question of who will succeed the 87-year-old leader.
Under his nom de guerre, Rex Nhongo, he was the director of Mr Mugabe's forces during the 1970s' war of independence.
State Security Minister Sydney Sekeramayi said Gen Mujuru died in a fire at his farmhouse in Beatrice, about 80km (50 miles) south of the capital, Harare, in the early hours of Tuesday.
"We came here early in the morning after we were told what had happened. I still thought he might have been badly burnt, it was difficult to reconcile that he actually died - burnt beyond recognition," Mr Sekeramayi told state-run ZBC television.
"Rex Nhongo, Gen Solomon Mujuru, was just a charred body - one of Zimbabwe's greatest sons," the minister said, struggling to hold back his emotion.
Pathologists and police are investigating the cause of the fire at the 3,500-acre farm that had been seized from a white farmer in 2001.
A close relative told the BBC the family had no idea what caused the fire which eventually engulfed the farmhouse.
It began when the general was alone. Guards noticed plumes of smoke and called the maid, the relative said.
They tried to get into the house but the flames were so fierce they could not enter, they said.
When the fire service arrived the general's body was found close to the front door apparently overcome by the fumes, the relative said.
The BBC's Brian Hungwe in Harare says Gen Mujuru was a senior politburo member in the Zanu-PF party and regarded as a moderate.
He was a strategist and rumoured power broker in divisive Zanu-PF succession politics, he says.
His death will create a void and leave his wife - one of the country's two vice-presidents - exposed, analysts say.
There has been fierce rivalry between the Mujurus and Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa for control of the party.
During the war against Rhodesian rule in the 1970s, Gen Mujuru led the armed struggle together with the late Josiah Tongogora.
Knox Chitiyo, of the London-based think-tank Royal United Services Institute, knew Gen Mujuru personally and said he was someone "who couldn't be pushed around".
"He was very, very respected particularly among the military in Zimbabwe and among the liberation war veterans. His liberation war credentials were pretty impeccable," Mr Chitiyo told the BBC.
He said Gen Mujuru had also proved his mettle after independence during the early 1980s.
"He had to handle a lot of internal politics within the party, a lot of politics within the military and for him to be able to handle that and retain his capacity as head of the military showed that he was a tough guy," Mr Chitiyo added.
The circumstances of the death would raise a number of questions, he said.
"There's definitely going to be a lot of speculation about this, for two reasons: One is [that] his predecessor died in a car crash and also because of what's going on right now in Zimbabwean politics - the issues around the succession, the possible elections, possibly next year."
Our reporter says it was Gen Mujuru who implored the freedom fighters in Mozambique during the conflict to accept Mr Mugabe as the leader of the Zanla rebel movement forces after his release from detention in 1974.
At independence in 1980 he took over the command of the army, before retiring and going into business 10 years later.
Our reporter says as the leading commander of the liberation war against colonial rule, he is expected to be buried at the national shrine, Heroes Acre, some time this week.
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ad2a4ef38c00d9e79a6c75e63f2b342a | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14677754 | Libya conflict: Nato jets hit Gaddafi Sirte bunker | Libya conflict: Nato jets hit Gaddafi Sirte bunker
British Tornado jets fired precision-guided missiles at a large bunker in Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte, officials have said.
The aircraft took off from RAF Marham in Norfolk on a long-range strike mission on Thursday night.
The Libyan rebels are building up their forces east of Sirte, in preparation for a major assault. They continue to face unexpectedly stiff resistance.
Rebel leaders are meanwhile calling on other states to unfreeze Libyan assets.
The UN has already agreed to release $1.5bn (£1bn) in funds, which had been frozen under Security Council sanctions at the beginning of the uprising in February, to help with immediate humanitarian needs.
But South African President Jacob Zuma said the African Union (AU) would not yet recognise the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) as the sole representative of the Libyan people until hostilities ended.
"If there is fighting, there is fighting. So we can't stand here and say this is the legitimate [government] now. The process is fluid. That's part of what we inform countries - whether there is an authority to recognise," he said.
Later, the AU called for an inclusive transitional government to be formed.
In a statement issued on Friday, the UK Ministry of Defence said "a formation of Tornado GR4s... fired a salvo of Storm Shadow precision-guided missiles against a large headquarters bunker" in Sirte.
The bunker housed a command and control centre. There is no indication that Col Gaddafi was in Sirte, which is 250 miles (400km) east of Tripoli, or in the bunker itself at the time of the attack.
"It's not a question of finding Gaddafi, it's ensuring the regime does not have the capability to continue waging war against its own people," UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox told the BBC.
"The attack that we launched on the bunker in Sirte last night was to make sure that there was no alternative command and control should the regime try to leave Tripoli."
Nato warplanes also targeted 29 vehicles mounted with weapons near Sirte and bombed surface-to-air missile facilities near Tripoli, the alliance said at a daily briefing in Brussels.
Meanwhile, the rebels are building up their forces around the oil port town of Ras Lanuf, preparing for an assault on Sirte, about 250km (155 miles) along the coast to the west.
They had to withdraw from positions nearer Sirte to put themselves out of the range of Grad rockets being fired by Gaddafi loyalists.
The BBC's Paul Wood, who is with the rebels, says their mood is still buoyant, despite running into unexpectedly stiff resistance.
Rebel commanders think the fighting on the road to Sirte could last another three or four days, our correspondent says.
The National Transitional Council has begun moving to Tripoli, although many senior figures remain in the eastern stronghold of Benghazi.
Spokesman Ali Tarhouni said the NTC's chairman, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, would arrive as soon as the security situation permitted.
He called on forces still loyal to Col Gaddafi to surrender.
"Put your weapons down and go home. We will not take revenge. Between us and you is the law. I promise you will be safe," he said.
Speaking in Istanbul, the head of the NTC's cabinet, Mahmoud Jibril, said the uprising could fall apart if funds were not forthcoming quickly.
"The biggest destabilising element would be the failure... to deliver the necessary services and pay the salaries of the people who have not been paid for months," he said. "Our priorities cannot be carried out by the government without having the necessary money immediately."
In Tripoli, there was continued fighting near the international airport. Several aircraft were reportedly destroyed by rocket fire.
A rebel commander told the Associated Press the airport was largely under rebel control, but loyalists were shelling it from a nearby military base once controlled by Col Gaddafi's son, Khamis.
There was also fighting on Friday in the capital's southern Abu Salim district, one of the last areas loyal to Col Gaddafi.
A Scottish nurse working at the hospital in Abu Salim, Karen Graham, told the BBC they were "overwhelmed" with casualties.
"All the staff were just doing the best we can, but we were literally inundated," she said. "We'd just clear one lot of casualties and the next lot would be getting brought in. Our theatre just couldn't cope... This is the first time we've had such a vast number of people in."
Dozens of decomposing bodies were piled up at one hospital in the area, AP reported. One room had 21 lying on stretchers, while 20 more were left in a courtyard. It was not clear who killed the men, or when they died.
Human rights group Amnesty International
says it has evidence
that both pro-Gaddafi forces and rebels abused detainees in their care.
Guards loyal to Col Gaddafi raped child detainees at Abu Salim prison, Amnesty said. It also accused rebels of beating prisoners, including a boy conscripted by Gaddafi forces who surrendered to the rebels at Bir Tirfas.
The UN is to investigate reports of summary killings and torture through its existing commission of inquiry on Libya.
"We urge all those in positions of authority in Libya, including field commanders, to take active steps to ensure that no crimes, or acts of revenge, are committed," UN spokesman Rupert Colville told Reuters.
The UN has previously said some military action in Libya could amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
The BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes visited a hospital in the Mitiga district of Tripoli which had received the bodies of 17 rebel fighters.
Doctors said the group had been prisoners of Gaddafi troops in Tripoli and were tortured and killed as the rebels seized the capital earlier this week.
Dr Hoez Zaitan, a British medic working at the hospital, said about half the bodies had bullet wounds to the back of the head while others had disfiguring injuries to their limbs and hands.
He said the bodies had been examined for possible evidence to be used at a war crimes tribunal.
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167c8858d0004bfdf190d3144270a627 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14705004 | Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is 'in coma' | Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is 'in coma'
Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is in a coma at his Tripoli home in Libya, it is being reported.
CNN said Megrahi appeared to be "at death's door"
in the care of family. He is technically on licence but his whereabouts were thought to be unknown.
Megrahi was freed from a Scottish prison in 2009 on health grounds. There have been calls for him to be returned to jail in the UK or tried in the US.
But Libyan rebel leaders have said they do not intend to allow his extradition.
Megrahi had been jailed in 2001 for the bombing of a US plane over Lockerbie, with the loss of 270 lives, before he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer and freed.
Scottish officials had tried to contact him following the rebel advance into Tripoli.
Megrahi technically remains a Scottish prisoner released on licence and is obliged to remain in regular contact with East Renfrewshire Council.
On Friday, the Scottish government said he had not been due to contact them for some time yet but social workers from East Renfrewshire Council had been trying to contact him.
After reports that Megrahi had been found, the government and council issued a statement saying they had been in contact with his family and his licence had not been breached.
International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said the fighting and disorder in Tripoli had made it harder to keep track of him.
"His life does appear to be drawing to a close, he's in a coma," he said.
CNN reported on Sunday that Megrahi was "comatose" and "near death... surviving on oxygen and an intravenous drip" and not eating.
"We just give him oxygen, nobody gives us any advice," Megrahi's son, Khaled, told the US broadcaster.
"There is no doctor. There is nobody to ask. We don't have any phone line to call anybody."
CNN reporter Nic Robertson said he last saw Megrahi two years ago and described his appearance as "much iller, much sicker, his face is sunken... just a shell of the man he was".
Megrahi is the only person to have been convicted in connection with the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in 1988.
The victims of the bombing were mainly US nationals and the decision to release him, taken by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, sparked an angry reaction in the United States.
The former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told BBC Radio 5 live that Megrahi should have been given the death penalty and was lucky to be alive.
Mr Bolton said Megrahi should be in jail and called for him to extradited.
"To me it will be a signal of how serious the rebel government is for good relations with the United States and the West if they hand over Megrahi for trial," he said.
"He killed 270 people. He served roughly 10 years in jail before he was released by British authorities. Do the math - that means he served roughly two weeks in prison for every person he killed. Two weeks per murder. That is not nearly enough."
Stephanie Bernstein, whose husband Michael was one of those killed, told BBC Radio 5 live that Megrahi's death would bring some regret to the victims' families.
"He was one person in a long line of people who I'm sure was responsible for the bombing and when he dies, some of the knowledge about what happened will go with him," she said.
She added that she hoped the rebels' National Transitional Council would be committed to finding out what happened.
Bob Monetti, the father of another victim, said Megrahi was a source of embarrassment to Scotland but "sort of irrelevant".
"Mr Megrahi just probably put the bomb on the plane, but somebody else made it, and somebody else told him to do it, somebody else planned the whole thing out," he told the BBC.
"I'd like to find out who those people were, and find out a lot more of the details about what went on and why they did it."
But Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the blast, said he believed Megrahi was innocent and hoped he was getting decent pain relief at home with his family.
"I feel extremely resentful that the murder of my lovely elder daughter Flora should be embedded in what I'm satisfied is in fact a tissue of lies which led to a politically useful outcome," he said.
Mohammed al-Alagi, justice minister for the new leadership in Tripoli, earlier refused to countenance handing Megrahi over.
"We will not hand over any Libyan citizen to the West," he said.
"And from points A, B and C of justice, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has already been judged once, and will not be judged again.
"We will not hand over any Libyan nationals, it's Gaddafi who hands over Libyan nationals."
The National Transitional Council is now recognised by Britain as the sole governmental authority for Libya.
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57d473551f83791f70acf3b1e2cb6901 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14751660 | Libya conflict: Where could Muammar Gaddafi be hiding? | Libya conflict: Where could Muammar Gaddafi be hiding?
Former Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi
has disappeared from view, and finding him has become an urgent priority for Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC). NTC officials say they can't be sure of his whereabouts, but they think he may be hiding in the southern desert with the help of Tuareg tribesmen. Here's a look at some possible hiding places:
Hisham Buhagiar, a military commander heading the search for Col Gaddafi, said in late September that he believed the fugitive leader was hiding near Ghadamis, 550km (345 miles) south-west of Tripoli and close to both the Algerian and Tunisian borders.
Another NTC military official, Ahmed Bani, said a recent attack on Ghadamis had raised suspicions that Col Gaddafi was in the surrounding region, and that Gaddafi loyalists were creating a diversion. He said the Tuaregs who populate desert areas were probably being paid to protect Col Gaddafi.
Weeks earlier, the Algerian newspaper El Watan reported that Col Gaddafi had tried to call Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika from Ghadamis. He was said to be seeking refuge in Algeria, after his wife and three of his children
crossed into the country on 29 August
.
Sirte
is Col Gaddafi's birthplace. It was long cited as somewhere he might seek refuge, and Gaddafi loyalists there have shown fierce resistance.
Col Gaddafi developed Sirte from an obscure outpost into a second capital, maintaining a substantial compound there. The city hosts a major army garrison and has an air base nearby. Nato has previously targeted a "large bunker" in Sirte.
The city is home to members of Col Gaddafi's own Qadhadfa tribe and another local tribe, the Magariha; in an
audio message on 1 September
, Col Gaddafi said the tribes were armed and "there is no way they will submit".
NTC officials have said they believe one of Col Gaddafi's sons, Mutassim, is in Sirte.
But it may be too obvious a hiding place for the fugitive leader, partly because of its symbolic importance. Now that it is surrounded, the only realistic route of escape would be the sea, where Nato warships are deployed.
Bani Walid is a city of some 50,000 people, 150km (95 miles) south-east of Tripoli. Col Gaddafi is reputed to have a lot of support there, though the city is mixed in its make-up. It is a stronghold for the Warfalla tribe.
In his defiant audio message on 1 September, Col Gaddafi referred to it as "an armed fortress", and as in Sirte, loyalists there have held out against the advance of NTC fighters.
The NTC may have made inroads in parts of the city, but the sprawling south could provide cover, as well as an escape route across the desert.
NTC officials were quoted as saying Col Gaddafi had fled with his son Saif al-Islam and intelligence chief Abdullah Sanussi to Bani Walid at the end of August. They believed the Gaddafis were trying to organise counter-attacks from the city.
Hisham Buhagiar later said that he believed the former leader had left Bani Walid and was heading south, but that Saif al-Islam remained in the city.
Sabha is a desert town hundreds of miles south of Tripoli, with tens of thousands of inhabitants. Though not as large as Bani Walid, Sabha is significantly further south and may therefore offer better escape options.
Among its residents are many members of Col Gaddafi's Qadhadfa tribe.
However, the depth of their loyalty has been uncertain. In the past, Col Gaddafi had a number of people in Sabha executed, including members of the Qadhadfa and some of his own cousins.
There was reportedly a big anti-Gaddafi demonstration in the midst of the uprising, which is said to have been put down ruthlessly.
It was one of the last outposts for Gaddafi loyalists, but NTC officials announced on 21 September that they had taken control of the town.
Fighters hunt for Colonel Gaddafi
Tripoli fell to the Col Gaddafi's opponents on 23 August, and the compound of Bab al-Aziziya - the regime's symbolic centre -
was overrun
.
If Col Gaddafi had been in the compound shortly before, he may have used its network of tunnels and bunkers to take cover or escape.
In the short term, he could have sought anonymity in one of the areas of Tripoli that continued to fight.
In an
audio message on 31 August
, Col Gaddafi's most prominent son
Saif al-Islam
said he was speaking from the outskirts of the capital, and that he had been out for a walk earlier in the day. He said his father was well, but gave no indication of his whereabouts.
However, it now seems highly unlikely that Col Gaddafi would have remained in the capital. Hiding in plain sight would be a risky strategy, and make an escape harder to engineer.
Speculation that the colonel might seek refuge in another country was fuelled by the flight of a number of the Gaddafi entourage to Niger at the beginning of September.
They included Col Gaddafi's security chief
Mansour Daw
, and possibly his son Saadi - whom international police agency Interpol say was last seen in Niger.
Initial reports that Col Gaddafi could be hiding somewhere in the convoy, and that Burkina Faso had offered him refuge, were denied.
Many think the colonel's most likely escape route will involve travelling south.
The NTC's Hisham Buhagiar earlier cited reports that Col Gaddafi was trying to head towards Chad or Niger.
However, sanctuary would appear unlikely in either of these countries. Chad has now recognised the NTC. And Niger, which has recently installed a civilian democracy after years of authoritarian rule, would be risking its reputation by taking him in.
Niger recognises the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is seeking the arrest of Col Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam and Abdullah Sanussi.
Algeria has had stormy relations with the NTC, and is not a party to the ICC's statute, but its foreign minister has said his country will not take in the fugitive leader. According to Algeria's El-Chorouk newspaper, President Bouteflika has told his cabinet Algeria would hand Col Gaddafi over to the ICC should he try to flee to the west.
If Col Gaddafi were to attempt such an escape, he may have to do so secretly.
Sudan, under Omar al-Bashir, has been touted as another candidate for refuge. Mr Bashir is also wanted by the ICC, and with his regime propped up by Chinese investment, he would seem to have less to lose than most.
Zimbabwe and South Africa have also been mentioned as possible destinations. But it would be hard for Col Gaddafi to escape undetected by air, and travelling to these countries by any other means would be perilous, not least because some of the nations en route are signed up to the ICC statute and would, in theory, be obliged to arrest him.
Gaddafi: African asylum seeker?
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07a8ece6f9866b28fe8f68e92ec6d262 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14789140 | Rwanda terror trial of Victoire Ingabire to proceed | Rwanda terror trial of Victoire Ingabire to proceed
A Rwandan judge has ordered the terror trial of opposition leader Victoire Ingabire to proceed.
She is accused of propagating ethnic hatred and "genocide revisionism" - charges she says are politically motivated.
The prosecution wanted the trial to be postponed until more evidence arrived from the Netherlands, where Ms Ingabire lived until January 2010.
She was arrested in April and barred from standing in last year's election.
She appeared in court in handcuffs, wearing the standard pink Rwandan prison uniform and with her head shaved.
The BBC's Geoffrey Mutagoma in Kigali says it is common for Rwandan prisoners to have their heads shaved for hygiene reasons.
Her British lawyer Iain Edwards argued for the trial to proceed as planned and judge Alice Rulisa agreed.
"The prosecutor has said from the beginning that they were ready to proceed, and that they had all the evidence they needed to prosecute this case," she said.
"Now they are saying they need more time."
The trial has already been delayed on two occasions.
The Unified Democratic Forces party leader is accused of colluding with an ex-officer of a Hutu militia to buy and distribute weapons to threaten national security.
Ms Ingabire said the charges were a fabrication and politically motivated.
If she is found guilty of all the charges, she is likely to get a life sentence, our reporter says.
Ms Ingabire is a Hutu and most of the 800,000 people killed in the 1994 conflict were ethnic Tutsis.
President Paul Kagame, the former rebel leader whose Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) put an end to the genocide, won a second term in office in August 2010 with 93% of the vote.
|
a79cd6fc6662db3fd3dbac98380bf6f0 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14839406 | Zuma appoints controversial Judge Mogoeng to top post | Zuma appoints controversial Judge Mogoeng to top post
South Africa's President Jacob Zuma has appointed a judge who is an ordained pastor with controversial views on rape and homosexuality as chief justice.
Lobby groups had urged Mr Zuma not to appoint Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng as South Africa's top judge, saying he was lenient on rapists, which he denies.
South Africa has one of the world's highest incidences of rape.
Mr Zuma said he was confident that with Judge Mogoeng at the helm, the judiciary was in good hands.
Last week, Judge Mogoeng said God wanted him to be chief justice.
Judge Mogoeng had served on the Constitutional Court since 2009 and had previously been the president of the High Court in North West province.
Many of South Africa's top lawyers - backed by human rights groups and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) - had opposed his nomination during public hearings.
Earlier this week, the Nobel Women's Initiative - which includes peace laureates Shirin Ebadi of Iran, Mairead Maguire of Ireland and Jody Williams of the US - threw their weight behind the anti-Mogoeng campaign.
Some 55,000 women a year report being raped in South Africa, the police say.
"Many of his rulings have undermined the severity of the crime of rape
and its consequences for victims and invoke dangerous myths about rape that often blame the victims themselves and excuse perpetrators of egregious crimes," they said in a statement.
In 2004, Judge Mogoeng reduced the sentence of a man convicted of raping a seven-year-old girl from life imprisonment to 18 years, the minimum.
A year later, he reduced the jail sentence of a man who had attempted to rape a seven-year-old girl from five years to two years.
In one ruling, Judge Mogoeng excused a husband who raped his wife, saying the man had been tempted because the woman was wearing a nightdress and pants, the AP news agency reports.
He also suggested that sex between a husband and his wife could not be considered rape, AP reports.
During his nomination hearing last week, Judge Mogoeng denied he was insensitive to rape.
He said he had also increased the sentences of rapists - in some cases to life imprisonment.
Judge Mogoeng - who is an ordained pastor with the Winners Chapel International, which condemns homosexuality - said he would uphold South Africa's constitution, which respects gay rights.
"When a position comes like this one, I wouldn't take it unless I had prayed and satisfied myself that God wants me to take it," Judge Mogoeng said during his nomination hearing.
Judge Mogoeng was a member of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) during white minority rule, which ended in 1994.
During the anti-apartheid struggle, he mediated in conflicts between members of the BCM and the African National Congress (ANC), the main liberation movement which is now in power, analysts say.
His nomination came on the day South Africa's Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said the police were not winning the war against rape.
He said rape had increased since last year, but other crimes had decreased in South Africa.
The murder rate had dropped by 6.5% in the 12 months to April, Mr Mthethwa said.
Police Commissioner Gen Bheki Cele said higher police visibility was one of the main reasons for the overall fall in crime.
In 1994, more than 27,000 murders were reported in South Africa. This year, number had dropped to just under 16,000, he said.
Mr Zuma's government has been under intense pressure to tackle crime as South Africa has one of the highest murder and rape rates in the world, analysts say.
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5405e65234ac798cac215c840e4914d1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15349597 | Kenya troops 'advance into Somalia near Afmadow' | Kenya troops 'advance into Somalia near Afmadow'
Kenyan troops with aerial support are continuing their advance into Somalia towards a town held by al-Shabab 120km (75 miles) from the border.
The Kenyan government wants to push the militants away from its border following a spate of kidnappings it blames on the Islamist insurgent group.
Kenyan army spokesman Maj Emmannuel Chirchir said the advance to Afmadow had been slowed by muddy terrain.
Meanwhile, three civilians have died in a Mogadishu car bomb, witnesses say.
The BBC's Mohammed Dhore in the city says the suspected suicide car bomb went off outside the former ministry of foreign affairs, which is now unoccupied.
Earlier this month, al-Shabab militants carried out a suicide bombing in Mogadishu which killed at least 70 people.
The militant group has warned of attacks in Kenya unless the troops withdraw and the blast occurred as Kenya's defence and foreign ministers, Yusuf Haji and Moses Wetangula, were at the city's main airport for talks with Somali government officials.
Al-Shabab, which controls much of southern Somalia, has denied carrying out any abductions.
It is locked in a battle with the transitional government for control of the parts of the country which are currently outside its power, particularly the capital, Mogadishu.
The UN-backed government in Mogadishu has refused to admit that the Kenyan troops are inside Somalia.
But BBC East Africa correspondent Will Ross says sources indicate that Somali government troops are working in tandem with the Kenyans in order to attack the al-Shabab-controlled areas.
Eyewitnesses say al-Shabab officials have forced truck owners to hand over their vehicles so that fighters can be moved towards Afmadow.
Maj Chirchir said the Kenyan army's advance was going well, despite troops' progress being slowed down by muddy terrain and heavy rain.
Afmadow is about 90km north of the port city of Kismayo, al-Shabab's main economic power base.
Afmadow resident Hussein Osman Roble told Reuters news agency most people in the town had fled towards the Kenyan border.
"Jets have flown low over Afmadow, terrifying the residents, while al-Shabab is digging trenches and tunnels for defence inside and around Afmadow," he said.
The government controls very little territory, but does have several militant groups around the country it regards as allies, and it is backed by the international community.
Kenyan officials said they wanted to ensure al-Shabab militants were not able to operate anywhere near the two countries' shared border.
Nairobi has been infuriated by a string of abductions of foreign nationals near the border.
Most recently, two Spanish aid workers were seized from the Dadaab refugee camp.
A Frenchwoman living in Lamu and a British woman tourist have also been kidnapped in recent weeks and a British man killed.
After two decades of civil conflict, Somalia is awash with guns, and analysts say any number of groups could have carried out the kidnappings - including pirate gangs.
Our correspondent says the transitional government already relies on foreign troops from the African Union, so it is embarrassing to admit that it needs yet another country to intervene.
Previous foreign interventions in Somalia have ended in humiliating withdrawals - the US in 1992 and Ethiopia in 2009.
Correspondents say many Kenyans will fear their country could be bogged down in a long, unwinnable conflict.
Al-Shabab, which has links with al-Qaeda, has threatened Kenya on several occasions in the past.
But it has rarely acted outside Somalia - the only previous major attack it has said it carried out was a 2010 suicide bombing in Uganda's capital Kampala in which dozens of people died.
Nairobi Provincial Police commander Antony Kibuchi urged residents of the capital city be more vigilant following al-Shabab's warning on Monday.
"We have stepped up security across the city following these threats issued by al-Shabab," AFP news agency quotes him as saying.
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b478fbe1ac18b566c56b9d9bec584867 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15380244 | East Africa drought 'remains huge crisis' - UK official | East Africa drought 'remains huge crisis' - UK official
Three months after famine was declared in Somalia, the scale of the crisis in the Horn of Africa remains huge, says a British official.
International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said hundreds of people, mainly children, were dying every day.
According to new figures cited by Mr Mitchell, British aid is feeding more than 2.4m people across the region.
The coming rainy season is expected to bring disease to crowded refugee camps.
In Somalia alone, Mr Mitchell points out, more than 400,000 children remain at risk of death.
Health has had a high priority in British aid that has come to the region - 1.3m people being vaccinated against measles, for example, while 400,000 doses of anti-malarial medication are currently on their way to Somalia.
While the rains can bring more misery and death in their wake, they can of course be part of the recovery from this disaster too.
More than 200,000 people are being given UK-funded seeds to plant when conditions have improved.
The greatest challenge continues to be reaching those in need inside the parts of Somalia worst affected by conflict, where famine was first declared in July.
As a measure of the challenge, the number of Somali refugees crossing into south-eastern Ethiopia has been steadily rising again.
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c9e403251498f33546f76dba43dce038 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15516678 | Gaddafi: 'He died an angry and disappointed man' | Gaddafi: 'He died an angry and disappointed man'
Bombed-out devastation is pretty much all you see when you drive in to Misrata.
A few men sit on shabby orange sofas in front of the rubble that lines the main road. The only real sign of life here is the newly-dubbed Misrata Museum where weapons seized from Gaddafi loyalists and other spoils of war are displayed and gloated over.
But one of Misrata's prized trophies is very much hidden from public view.
Mansour Dhao Ibrahim is one of Libya's most wanted - a man believed to have ordered the killing, rape and torture of the opponents of Col Muammar Gaddafi.
It is thought he knows the whereabouts of several mass graves of anti-Gaddafi fighters.
Mansour Dhao's interrogation was briefly stopped to allow us to talk to him. He was sitting crossed-legged and bare-foot on the floor when we met him, a Koran in front of him and a slightly blood-smeared mattress beside him.
A trusted member of Col Gaddafi's inner circle, Mansour Dhao was captured with him in Sirte. He provides a rare insight into the former dictator's state of mind in his last hours and days.
"Gaddafi was nervous. He couldn't make any calls or communicate with the outside world. We had little food or water. Sanitation was bad," he told me.
"He paced up and down in a small room, writing in a notebook. We knew it was over. Gaddafi said, 'I am wanted by the International Criminal Court. No country will accept me. I prefer to die by Libyan hands'."
Suicide mission
Mansour Dhao said Col Gaddafi then made the decision to go to his birthplace, the nearby valley of Jarref. I asked if it was a suicide mission.
"It was a suicide mission," Mansour Dhao said. "We felt he wanted to die in the place he was born. He didn't say it explicitly, but he was going with the purpose to die."
But Col Gaddafi's plan was thwarted - his convoy was bombed by Nato.
The once-feared dictator scrambled into a water pipe for cover. That is where he was found and captured.
With him inside the water pipe was Huneish Nasr, Col Gaddafi's personal driver.
When we spoke to him at the detention centre, he was wearing the same bloody shirt he was wounded in that day.
He said: "Gaddafi got out of the pipe. I stayed inside. I couldn't get out. There was such a crowd of fighters.
"Gaddafi had nowhere to go. He was one man amongst many and the fighters were shouting, 'Gaddafi, Gaddafi, Gaddafi'."
Huneish Nasr was nervous and clearly mindful of his captors, two of whom stood with us in the room, their arms folded.
His black eyes darted around the room.
He insisted over and over that the fighters who captured Col Gaddafi did not shoot when they came towards him.
'Angry and disappointed'
He said Col Gaddafi did not seem surprised to see them approach. He said he seemed resigned.
But Mansour Dhao believes Col Gaddafi died an angry and disappointed man.
"He thought his people should love him until the end. He felt he had done so many good things for them and for Libya. He also felt betrayed by men who had seemed to be his friends, like Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi," he said.
When I asked about terror and torture, the men were less forthcoming. They fear for their lives. If found guilty in Libya, Mansour Dhao could be hanged.
Still, while waiving any personal responsibility, Mansour Dhao spoke about crimes of the Gaddafi regime that are well-known but rarely confirmed by a Gaddafi loyalist.
He said opponents of Col Gaddafi were tortured, that he openly sponsored international terrorism and that the Lockerbie bombing was planned by Gaddafi's external security.
He said one of Gaddafi's most terrible moments was when he ordered the mass murder of around 1,200 essentially political prisoners in Abu Salim jail in Tripoli back in 1996.
The fate of Mansour Dhao and Huneish Nasr is uncertain.
Will the fighters of Misrata hand over their prisoners, along with their weapons and their newly-found power, to the new transitional authorities in Libya?
Or will regional rivalries blight Libya's future before the problems of the past are solved?
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df6fac7e50a721e35729121f21d447e7 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15591654 | Kenya army warns of al-Shabab donkeys in Somalia | Kenya army warns of al-Shabab donkeys in Somalia
Kenya's military spokesman has said large groups of donkeys in Somalia will be considered "al-Shabab activity" following reports the militants are using the animals to transport weapons.
Maj Emmanuel Chirchir used Twitter to warn Kenyans not to sell their donkeys to the Islamist group.
Kenya sent troops into Somalia to establish a buffer zone, after accusing al-Shabab of cross-border kidnappings.
Al-Shabab, which controls southern Somalia, denies the allegations.
It has accused Kenya of planning a full-scale invasion of Somalia.
On Tuesday,
Maj Chirchir used official Twitter account
to warn that al-Shabab camps near 10 Somali towns would soon be attacked and urged residents to leave.
However, no such attacks have yet occurred.
He has also posted video which he says shows a small al-Shabab boat being sunk, killing 18 militants and warned aircraft not to land in the Islamist-held town of Baidoa, following reports that al-Shabab had been flying in new supplies of weapons.
In his latest series of tweets, the Kenyan military spokesman said that the price of donkeys had risen from $150 (£100) to $200 following the increased al-Shabab demand for the animals.
"Any large concentration and movement of loaded donkeys will be considered as al-Shabab activity," he wrote, suggesting they would be targeted by Kenyan firepower.
"Selling Donkeys to al-Shabab will undermine our efforts in Somalia," he continued.
BBC East Africa correspondent Will Ross says it is not clear whether al-Shabab are using donkeys because the muddy roads are impassable for vehicles or to avoid detection from aircraft.
Maj Chirchir also said that any "unauthorised flying over the region" would be considered a threat.
"All aircrafts are hereby warned not to land in BAIDOA. Anyone violating this will be doing so at their peril," he wrote.
Last weekend, the Kenyan military was accused of bombing a refugee camp, killing five people, including three children.
Maj Chirchir denied the accusation and said a Kenyan fighter jet had only hit al-Shabab positions in Jilib, killing 10 militia fighters.
People abducted from Kenya since September include a French woman suffering from cancer, who French authorities say has since died; a British woman taken from a coastal resort, whose husband was killed in the raid; and a Kenyan driver and two Spanish aid workers seized from the Dadaab refugee camp near the Kenya-Somalia border.
After two decades of civil conflict, Somalia is awash with guns, and analysts say any number of groups could have carried out the kidnappings - including pirate gangs.
Al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda, is locked in a battle with the weak UN-backed interim government for control of the parts of the country which are currently outside its power, particularly the capital, Mogadishu.
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97dc26dbe8a97ab5b13c5d7c5fdde6a6 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15605041 | Nigeria Boko Haram attack 'kills 63' in Damaturu | Nigeria Boko Haram attack 'kills 63' in Damaturu
At least 63 people have been killed in bomb and gun attacks in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Damaturu, the Red Cross says.
Witnesses said the bombs hit several targets, including churches and the headquarters of the Yobe state police.
The Islamist militant group Boko Haram told a newspaper it was behind the attack and that it planned to hit further government targets.
A Nigerian journalist told the BBC he personally counted nearly 100 bodies.
"I saw 97 dead bodies in the morgue," Aminu Abubakar, who is in Damaturu, said.
"But an official involved in the evacuation told me that he counted 150 dead bodies although some had been taken away by their loved ones," he said.
President Goodluck Jonathan was "greatly disturbed" by the attack, and said his government was working hard to bring those "determined to derail peace and stability in the country to book", according to a spokesman.
A series of attacks on security forces in the nearby city of Maiduguri recently have also been blamed on Boko Haram.
Nigerian Red Cross official Ibrahim Bulama, in Damaturu, told the BBC at least 63 people had been killed there.
He said two other people had been killed in attacks elsewhere. News agencies said the nearby town of Potiskum had also been attacked.
The BBC's Jonah Fisher, in Nigeria's main commercial city, Lagos, says this attack appears to be Boko Haram's bloodiest strike to date.
An unnamed local government official in Damaturu was quoted by AFP news agency as saying that hundreds of wounded people were being treated in hospital.
Witnesses said the attacks began on Friday at about 18:30 (17:30 GMT) and lasted for about 90 minutes.
Gunmen then engaged in running battles with security forces.
A Roman Catholic parish priest told our correspondent his church had been burnt down and eight other churches also attacked.
He described gangs of young men roaming the streets throwing improvised bombs into the churches.
The attacks followed a triple suicide bomb attack on a military headquarters in Maiduguri, in neighbouring Borno state.
Military officials said the three attackers had died.
Boko Haram, which means "Western education is forbidden", has launched frequent attacks on the police and government officials.
A known spokesman for the group contacted called Nigeria's Daily Trust newspaper to say it carried out the attacks on Maiduguri and Damaturu.
"We will continue attacking federal government formations until security forces stop their excesses on our members and vulnerable civilians," he said.
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92597746ec4f2aa45b58d2ae1fda75d4 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15612162 | Kenya: Grenade attack on church in Garissa kills two | Kenya: Grenade attack on church in Garissa kills two
Two people have been killed in a grenade attack on a church in an eastern Kenyan town.
At least three others were injured after the grenade was thrown into the compound of the East African Pentecostal Church in Garissa.
Another bomb was placed near a military base in the town earlier on Saturday, but failed to detonate.
Police suggested the attack could have been carried out by Islamist extremists sympathetic to Somalia-based al-Shabab.
Ibrahim Makunyi, head pastor of the church in Garissa, said a house near the entrance of the church that belonged to a church elder had been bombed.
"One of the dead is a member of the choir, and the other is the son of the church elder," he was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.
Kenyan police chief Leo Nyongesa said that a woman and her two grandchildren were also injured, AP reports.
Mr Nyongesa said another bomb was thrown at a busy taxi circle frequented by military officers also on Saturday, but failed to explode.
Kenya sent its troops into Somalia last month to establish a buffer zone following a spate of kidnappings blamed on al-Shabab.
Al-Shabab denies involvement and accuses Kenya of planning a full-scale invasion of Somalia.
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049c5053d1ca8c7597fece2d2b88718a | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15726099 | Libyan factions in deadly clashes near Zawiya | Libyan factions in deadly clashes near Zawiya
Several days of fighting between rival factions near the Libyan coastal city of Zawiya have left at least seven people dead, reports say.
The BBC's Karen Allen in Libya says rival communities have been fighting for an area previously controlled by Gaddafi loyalists.
The interim government said the fighting had been resolved.
However analysts say the violence raises questions about stability in post-Gaddafi Libya.
The country is still awash with weapons and armed groups following the rebellion that led to the collapse of Col Muammar Gaddafi's rule.
Interim Libyan leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil said the ruling ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) had brought together elders from the feuding areas - Zawiya and the nearby tribal lands of Warshefana - and that the dispute has been resolved over the weekend.
"I want to assure the Libyan people that everything is under control," he said on Sunday.
However, witnesses said some fighting was still taking place as he spoke.
Reports said trouble flared up on Thursday when fighters from Warshefana set up a checkpoint on a highway near Zawiya, challenging fighters from the city.
Fighters from Zawiya reportedly accused their Warshefana counterparts of having links to the old government.
A fighter from the capital Tripoli, quoted by AP news agency, said the two sides had been battling for control of a military camp of the ousted government on the main road between Tripoli and Zawiya.
Witnesses reported hearing heavy gunfire and the explosions of rocket-propelled grenades.
At least seven people were killed although one report quoting medics in the Warshefana region put the toll at 13 - four from Zawiya and nine from Warshefana.
Mr Abdul-Jalil said the trouble had been started by "young men behaving irresponsibly" and that the NTC had established a committee to address the grievances of both sides.
NTC leaders have said they cannot quickly disarm the various armed factions across the country.
Mr Abdul-Jalil said there was high unemployment among the armed men and that the new government had to offer alternatives such as jobs, education and training.
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521c3fa4e3cf92bd429de46ecf45905d | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15792001 | The reality of Voodoo in Benin | The reality of Voodoo in Benin
As Pope Benedict XVI visits Benin, widely seen as the home of Voodoo, Virgile Ahissou from BBC Afrique explains the reality behind what is often a misunderstood religion.
Voodoo is completely normal in Benin.
People across West Africa, especially Togo, Ghana and Nigeria hold similar beliefs but in Benin it is recognised as an official religion, followed by some 40% of the population.
Voodoo Day is a public holiday and there is a national Voodoo museum.
It has none of the negative connotations it has in the West and many of those who are officially Christian or Muslim also incorporate some Voodoo elements into their beliefs, especially in times of crisis.
But Voodoo is more than a belief system, it is a complete way of life, including culture, philosophy, language, art, dance, music and medicine.
The Voodoo spiritual world consists of Mahou, the supreme being and about 100 divinities - or Voodoos - who represent different phenomena, such as war and blacksmiths (Gou), illness, healing and earth (Sakpata), storms, lightning and justice (Heviosso) or water (Mami Wata).
Voodoo priests ask these gods to intervene on behalf of ordinary people but local adherents stress that they have nothing to do with sorcery or black magic.
People here do not stick needles into dolls to cause misfortune to their enemies, as you see in some Western films - this image may have arisen from the icons of a particular god which a priest may have in their shrine.
Some Voodoo priests use herbs to cure the sick - and possibly to poison enemies.
They also sometimes ask for offerings, such as a chicken or a sheep, which is then sacrificed to the divinity, or some alcohol is poured onto the floor.
This can happen when asking for help or when you wish has been granted.
People seek help on a variety of issues - to be cured of a disease, find a job, complete a business deal, find a spouse or have a child.
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7040918d361454aa079e78ab69421b13 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15802056 | Islamist Hamadi Jebali of Ennahda 'to be Tunisian PM' | Islamist Hamadi Jebali of Ennahda 'to be Tunisian PM'
A senior official from the Islamist Ennahda party, Hamadi Jebali, is to become Tunisia's next prime minister, as part of a coalition deal between the three biggest parties, sources say.
The Congress for the Republic will hold the post of president, while Ettakatol will choose the speaker of the constitutional assembly, sources added.
Ennahda won the largest share of the vote in assembly elections last month.
The deal has not been officially announced.
The caretaker government will oversee the country until a general election, following the drafting of a new constitution.
According to the same sources, Moncef Marzouki, a veteran rights activist from the Congress for the Republic Party, is to be president while Mustafa Ben Jaafar of Ettakatol will be speaker of the constitutional assembly.
The nominations will require the approval of the constitutional assembly itself.
Last month's elections for a 217-member assembly were the first since a wave of popular uprisings in the Arab world began in Tunisia earlier this year.
In January, President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, was forced out amid widespread protests against his rule.
Ennahda won the most seats in October's poll, with 89, while the Congress for the Republic won 29 seats, and centre-right party Ettakatol gained 21.
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f268468eed355dbf96d878efba37d51f | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16101666 | Morocco's fish fight: High stakes over Western Sahara | Morocco's fish fight: High stakes over Western Sahara
At Laayoune's bustling port fishermen unload hundreds of trawlers, packing silvery sardines onto ice and into refrigerated containers.
Across the sea to the south, the end of a 98km (61 mile) conveyor belt is just visible, delivering phosphate - a key ingredient in agricultural fertiliser - from an inland desert mine to cargo ships.
The fish and phosphate, along with possible reserves of oil and gas, underlie a territorial dispute in Western Sahara that has long been politically deadlocked.
The Moroccan government contends that they provide a basis for economic development, helping drag this desert region into the modern era.
But for Sahrawi activists who still dream of independence, these are the spoils of an illegal occupation that is partly sustained in order to allow further plundering of natural resources.
The argument has played out this week in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where members voted down a fishing agreement between the European Union and Morocco amid objections that the deal was illegal.
Morocco seized control of most of Western Sahara in 1976, following the departure of the former colonial power, Spain.
It refers to the territory it controls as its "southern provinces".
Officials in Laayoune, the largest city in the area, say it has been transformed from a "wasteland" dotted with destitute nomads to a network of towns connected to national transport, power and telephone grids.
"There is a road from Tangier to Senegal," says Laayoune's mayor, Moulay Hamdi Ould Errachid, reeling off evidence of investment in the region.
"There are schools, hospitals with specialist doctors, clean water, two desalination plants with a third on the way, a great port."
Indeed, officials say the area has benefited from more investment than the rest of Morocco.
The authorities have declared Laayoune and Boujdour to be "cities free from shanty towns", a declaration which though disputed, could not be made in Casablanca or other Moroccan cities further north.
Over the past 35 years, economic incentives have lured people from the north. These migrants, some of whom are ethnically Sahrawi, are now thought to outnumber indigenous inhabitants by as many as two to one.
Mr Ould Errachid, a Sahrawi dressed in traditional white and golden robes, says the split between indigenous people and settlers may be more even, whilst arguing that the influx was necessary for development.
"If we want to live just among Sahrawis, we would not have professors, doctors, pharmacists and engineers," he said.
He added that a range of programmes were in place to boost the level of employment among Sahrawis, and secure jobs for them in the phosphate and fishing industries.
But Sahrawi activists who oppose Moroccan rule say Morocco has settled Western Sahara in order to establish de facto control.
They complain of continuing social and economic discrimination.
"The Moroccan state uses pro-Moroccan Sahrawis, and they live in luxury of course," says Lahbib Salhi, a 63-year-old former employee of Phosboucraa, the state phosphate company.
"They can't do anything independently, so they act against the interests of indigenous citizens."
He added that despite official claims to the contrary, "reality shows that Sahrawis are marginalised".
Mr Salhi said Sahrawis at Phosboucraa were made to work longer for less money after Morocco took the company over, and that just a fraction of the employees were now Sahrawis.
Against any economic advantage for the Moroccan government has to be set the high level of public spending in the region.
The International Crisis Group estimated in 2007 that Morocco had sunk $2.4bn (£1.5bn) on basic infrastructure over 30 years and was spending about half its military budget in the region. It concluded that Moroccans were having "to shoulder an exorbitant financial cost that has hampered national development".
But Morocco talks of investments rather than costs, and phosphate and fishing are strategically important sectors. When prices boomed in 2008 phosphate accounted for 33% of the country's exports, earning 4.5bn euros (£3.8bn).
About 10% of national phosphate production comes from Western Sahara. If the territory was independent, it would provide local competition that might bring down global prices.
The fishing industry accounts for 6.5% of national jobs, and Morocco is aiming expand the value of the sector rapidly over the next eight years. Nearly 40% of the national catch comes from the region of Laayoune.
Fishing has become the most politically sensitive industry in terms of the Western Sahara debate, largely because of a fishing agreement with between Morocco and the EU introduced in 2006.
The agreement, framed in a renewable annual protocol drawn up by the European Commission, cost 36m euros and gave access to more than 100 European boats.
Its critics said it was poor value for money and environmentally damaging. They also said it was illegal because the UN does not recognise Morocco as having sovereignty over Western Sahara, and because it was not clear that the fishing deal benefited Sahrawi people.
Isabella Loevin of the Swedish Green Party told the European Parliament this week: "74% of the EU fleet capacity does operate in the waters of Western Sahara and the people of this region have not been consulted on the matter.
"It is extremely clear that Morocco only wants to keep the fisheries agreement with the EU for one reason - to legitimise Morocco's illegal occupation of Western Sahara by making the EU an accomplice in this criminal act."
Even a confidential 2010 Commission report obtained by the BBC called the first four years of the agreement "disappointing".
Morocco claimed it had created jobs and was environmentally sustainable. But MEPs rejected the deal in its current form by 326 votes to 296 on Wednesday, which will lead to its immediate suspension.
They voted instead for a new protocol that is economically, ecologically and socially sustainable, and that fully respects international law.
Back in Laayoune, Ismaili Mohamed Barek, 34, had been hoping for such an outcome. He did a six months of work experience on a fishing boat, but said that he and his fellow Sahrawis were offered nothing at the end of it.
"Fishing is dominated almost 100% by Moroccans," he said.
"Because of this we want to see the pillaging of Sahrawi wealth stop, and we want an end to the agreement with the EU."
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95a7207b150e1c99359ba1c317fd6be8 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16229863 | Egypt violence: PM Ganzouri blames 'counter-revolution' | Egypt violence: PM Ganzouri blames 'counter-revolution'
Egypt's prime minister has described the latest protests in the capital Cairo as a "counter-revolution".
Kamal al-Ganzouri said those taking part in the deadly clashes were "not the youth of the revolution", a reference to the uprising in February that toppled President Mubarak.
His comments came as violence continued for a second day, following the deaths of eight protesters on Friday.
The demonstrators want an immediate handover to civilian rule in Egypt.
They object to the appointment of Mr Ganzouri last month by the ruling military.
The prime minister - who previously served under Mr Mubarak but has since distanced himself from the former regime - said the security forces had responded to the violence with patience.
"I said and I am still reiterating that we will never confront any peaceful demonstrations with any kind of violence, even the verbal kind," he said. "I am committed to this."
Saturday's protests began at dawn when protesters clashed with the security forces near parliament.
The demonstrators threw stones at riot police who had sealed off the streets around the building with barbed wire.
The protesters also set fire to government offices.
Security forces responded with water cannon and some threw objects at the protesters from the tops of buildings.
The activists have been staging a sit-in in the centre of Cairo since Mr Ganzouri's appointment, which followed mass protests last month in which nearly 40 people were killed.
On Friday, the security forces stormed a protest camp to try to move the activists away.
Although the troops later pulled back, street battles continued for much of the day.
Egyptian state television said eight people had been killed and about 300 injured.
Egypt's military council took control of the country in February after President Hosni Mubarak was forced from power by popular protests.
The military has promised a transition to civilian rule, with presidential elections due in June 2012.
Parliamentary elections are taking place in several stages.
The second round of voting on 14 and 15 December saw people go to the polls in nine of the country's 27 provinces.
Preliminary results suggest that Islamist parties have consolidated their lead over their liberal and secular rivals.
After the voting process is completed next month, the new lower house of parliament will appoint a 100-member committee to draw up a new constitution.
The protesters have accused the military of trying to entrench its position under the terms it has set out for the drafting of the constitution.
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71d017d99477d2c948d972f89cee4ec6 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16304439 | Libya's ruins: Will they pull the tourists? | Libya's ruins: Will they pull the tourists?
A cluster of women, all modestly dressed in head scarves, have gathered outside the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi' s compound at Bab al-Aziza in the capital, Tripoli.
It is the Libyan equivalent of a hen party. The bride, dressed head to foot in pink, is beaming as her friends take pictures, posing in front of the shattered remains of what was one of the colonel's home.
The site has become a tourist attraction drawing in curious crowds from across Libya. They peer at the rubble, photograph the graffiti and some arrive with spades, literally digging for gold.
Just as we leave a crowd of women, uniformly dressed in light blue head scarves, descend from a cluster of coaches.
"We're from Misrata [the city where Col Gaddafi's body was displayed after his killing in October]," one of them declares proudly, giving us the thumbs up sign and clutching her camera.
But it is relics of another bygone era that officials are hoping will draw in foreign tourists - not just rubberneckers or war tourists gawping at Nato's crude footprint following its bombing campaign to overthrow the former regime.
The ancient Roman sites of Leptis Magna and Sabratha lie to the east of Tripoli, easily reached within a couple of hours.
Their stunning location and fascinating history already attract a modest number of local visitors, but with a new interim government in office, there is already talk of how to attract more foreigners to Libya.
Imagine Knossos in Crete, the pyramids in Egypt or Pompei in Italy. Now, imagine no crowds. That is Libya.
"When people hear you are from Libya all they can say is Gaddafi," laments Ahmed, an engineering student from the beach-side neighbourhood that nestles beside the limestone ruins of Leptis Magna.
His is a generation that sees enormous growth and opportunity in a Libya that defines its own terms.
The signs have been there for the past few years - new hotels being built and Maltese businesses investing heavily as economic reforms creaked forward, albeit at a glacial pace.
But now the pace is likely to be stepped up and unlike many Libyan students who want to pursue careers abroad, Ahmed's aim is to try to rehabilitate his country in an attempt to woo foreigners in.
In the past, visa restrictions and cash constraints (credit card facilities were limited in many parts of Libya) put a cap on the numbers visiting Libya.
Most of the 220,000 tourists who came to the country each year were business tourists with just 50,000 holidaymakers.
"This is now our time," declares Jalal Baayou from the Arab Company for Tourism and Development, which does much of the subcontracted tourism development work for the new government.
He believes that with investment in infrastructure and improved security, Libya could become "a top destination to rival Egypt within the next 10 years".
That appears optimistic, given that rival militias still operate and nearly every second person you see in the street carries a weapon.
But these are early days and improved security and confidence, once the interim government paves the way to elections, signals enormous opportunities.
"Tourism could become the biggest revenue stream after oil," Mr Baayou beams.
George Orr, who agreed to give us a "foreigners eye'd view" of Tripoli, has been living in the city for more than 30 years. Originally from Fife in Scotland, Libya is now clearly home.
"I wish I had bought some land down at the beach," he sighs.
He snaps around the back alleys with the confidence of a local, regales us with the history of the first Anglican church in Libya - St Mary's, which was once a Catholic Cathedral - and sips strong Libyan coffee in a beautifully restored hotel down a back street in the Italian quarter, whilst conversing in perfect Arabic with the proprietor.
Despite the terrible memories of Italian colonial rule, the Italian influences are everywhere in the capital - from the people sipping macchiato in a piazza in the old city overlooking what was once a Spanish church and is now a mosque, to the laid back Mediterranean pace of life.
Specialist travellers have long selected itineraries that take them to the war cemeteries in Tobruk, Beghazi and Tripoli, which pay tribute to the fallen from the Second World War.
That sector is expected to grow but, instead of a country that is trading on its past, Libya will be trying cultivate the image of a modern tourist destination.
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5c97ebc0f212419f2e05c1c69928bf50 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16350635 | Nigeria Christians 'to defend churches from Boko Haram' | Nigeria Christians 'to defend churches from Boko Haram'
Nigerian Christians will have "no other option" but to defend themselves if attacks by Islamist militants continue, church leaders have said.
The Christian Association of Nigeria said the Boko Haram group had declared war with its recent violence.
More than 40 people were killed in attacks on churches in northern and central areas on Christmas Day.
Since then, some 90,000 people have fled their homes amid clashes between Boko Haram and police in Damaturu.
Earlier on Wednesday, six children and an adult were injured when a homemade bomb was thrown into an Islamic school in the southern Delta state.
A police spokesman said the bomb had been thrown from a moving car - it was not clear who was behind the attack, which has raised fears of retaliatory vigilante strikes.
BBC Africa correspondent Karen Allen says Africa's most populous nation and biggest oil producer faces the spectre of sectarian violence between the largely Muslim north and mostly Christian south.
Muslim leaders have, however, moved to downplay the prospect of communal clashes.
"The consensus is that the Christian community nationwide will be left with no other option than to respond appropriately if there are any further attacks on our members, churches and property," said the leader of the Christian Association of Nigeria, an umbrella group of the country's churches.
Ayo Oritsejafor was speaking at the St Theresa Church outside the capital, Abuja, where 35 people died in the Christmas Day bombings, the AFP news agency reports.
He said the attacks were "considered as a declaration of war on Christians and Nigeria as an entity," and that while he did not want to encourage acts of revenge, "Christians should protect themselves... in any way they can".
Mr Oritsejafor said the lack of response by Muslim leaders was an "abdication of their responsibilities", and that the Christian community was also "fast losing confidence in government's ability to protect our rights".
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who is a Christian, has held urgent meetings with Muslim and Christian leaders in an attempt to restore calm.
On Tuesday, Nigeria's main Muslim cleric, the Sultan of Sokoto, denounced the Christmas Day attacks and called for calm.
"I want to assure all Nigerians that there is no conflict between Muslims and Christians, between Islam and Christianity," said Muhammad Sa'ad Abubakar.
Boko Haram, which denies reports it has links to al-Qaeda, has said it carried out the Christmas Day attacks.
Last week, its militants were involved in heavy gun battles with government troops in the north-eastern city of Damaturu.
A state emergency management official said the clashes had displaced 90,000 people and that the entire district of Pompomari had been emptied as residents fled.
Boko Haram, which means "Western education is forbidden", wants the imposition of strict Sharia law in Nigeria.
The group carried out an August 2011 suicide attack on the UN headquarters in Abuja, in which more than 20 people were killed.
It was also responsible for a string of bomb blasts in the central city of Jos on Christmas Eve 2010.
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7d5e5c20304535911f054f0f18978f0b | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16486196 | Nigeria fuel strike: Burning roadblocks on second day | Nigeria fuel strike: Burning roadblocks on second day
Roadblocks have been set alight in Nigeria's main city of Lagos on the second day of an indefinite strike over the elimination of a fuel subsidy.
Correspondents say the city is tense after a protester was killed in Lagos on Monday in a demonstration over the doubling of petrol prices.
Unions in the northern city of Kano have cancelled protests after five people died.
Most businesses remain closed across the country, including the capital.
A demonstration organised by Nigeria's unions is about to get under way in the capital, Abuja, where shops, offices, schools and petrol stations are shut.
According to the AFP news agency, police have fired tear gas at protesters in Bauchi, a city in the north. No casualties have been reported.
The BBC's Mark Lobel in Lagos says the value of transactions on the Nigerian stock exchange was down to a fifth of its value on Monday, though oil firms say oil exports were unaffected.
Police pleaded for calm with some protesters who had manned a burning roadblock in Lagos, but instead they threw stones as the officers put out the flames, AP news agency reports.
Thousands of people taking part in the official march in Lagos walked through the streets to the sound of blaring Afrobeat music, sometimes with soldiers clapping and taking pictures, according to AFP.
Some carried a mock coffin labelled "Badluck", AFP says - a play on the name of President Goodluck Jonathan, who has said the fuel subsidy was economically unsustainable.
In Kano, a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed after Monday's fatalities when police clashed with protesters.
Union officials said there would be no further demonstrations in the city, but the strike action would continue, the BBC's Yusuf Ibrahim Yakasai reports.
Fuel and transport costs doubled after the subsidy ended on 1 January, angering many Nigerians, who saw it as the only benefit they received from the country's vast oil wealth.
Most of Nigeria's 160 million people live on less than $2 (£1.30) a day, so the sharp price increases have hit them hard.
Despite being a major oil producer, Nigeria has not invested in the infrastructure needed to produce refined fuel, so has to import much of its petrol.
With the subsidy, fuel was much cheaper in Nigeria than neighbouring countries, so some of it was smuggled abroad.
Members of parliament have called on President Jonathan to reconsider, but he made a televised address on Saturday to defend the the subsidy cut.
The deregulation of the petroleum sector was, he insisted, the best way to curb corruption and ensure the survival and growth of the economy.
He said that top government officials would, from this year, take a 25% pay cut, and foreign trips would also be reduced.
The government says it will spend the $8bn (£5bn) it saves each year by scrapping the subsidy on improving health, education and the country's erratic electricity supply.
The unrest comes at the same time as a surge in sectarian violence. The Islamist militant group Boko Haram has carried out a string of deadly attacks in recent weeks, mainly against Christian targets in the north-east.
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ad3accebb6fec7b6c2e13d687d9c7c1b | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17045265 | Libyans not keen on democracy, suggests survey | Libyans not keen on democracy, suggests survey
Many Libyans prefer strong leadership to democracy despite four decades spent under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi, a national survey suggests.
Just 15% of 2,000 people polled by academics from Benghazi and Oxford universities said democracy should be installed in the next year.
More than 40% backed strong leadership from one person or a group.
However, almost a third of those polled said they would like a democratic government in five years' time.
Despite the majority saying they wanted to see a firm hand in control, 69% also said they believed ordinary citizens should have a say in how Libya develops.
And some 16% of people said they were prepared to resort to violence for political ends.
The researchers say this would mean around 630,000 potential fighters - in addition to the 280,000 people who took up arms against the Gaddafi regime.
Oxford University's Dr Christoph Sahm said the survey suggested Libyans lacked the knowledge of how democracy works.
"This survey also reveals there is potential for future instability as a significant minority have indicated that they would be prepared to take up arms," he said.
But he added that the results painted a largely optimistic picture for Libya, with more than three quarters of people believing that their lives would be much better in 12 months' time.
Nearly four fifths said their interest in politics had increased since the revolution - which began a year ago in the eastern city of Benghazi and ended when Gaddafi was killed in October.
The BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse in Tripoli says the survey paints a picture of a country that is hugely optimistic about its future, but retains some of the habits of its past.
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73103d5fdb2f4729b06192e6303008f1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17080664 | Somalia: Far from a failed state? | Somalia: Far from a failed state?
With leaders from more than 50 countries and international organisations due to gather this week for the London Conference on Somalia, BBC Africa analyst and Somalia specialist Mary Harper argues that Somalia's business leaders offer reasons to hope for the war-torn country's future.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has managed to convince some of the world's most powerful people, including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to come to London because Somalia is seen as the world's most comprehensively failed state, representing a threat to itself, the Horn of Africa region and the wider world.
The conference will focus on three issues that have already had far-reaching and devastating consequences: Piracy, terrorism and famine.
But away from the headlines and the stereotypical media images of skeletal children, skinny pirates in tiny skiffs, and gun-wielding Islamist insurgents, their heads wrapped in black and white scarves, there is another side to the Somali story that is positive, enterprising and hopeful.
Remarkable things are happening which could serve as models for a new start.
It may come as a surprise that, despite coming top of the world's Failed State Index for the past four years in a row, Somalia ranks in the top 50% of African countries on several key development indicators.
A study by the US-based Independent Institute found that Somalia came near the bottom on only three out of 13 indicators: Infant mortality; access to improved water resources and immunisation rates.
It came in the top 50% in crucial indicators like child malnutrition and life expectancy, although this may have changed since last year's famine.
"Far from chaos and economic collapse, we found that Somalia is generally doing better than when it had a state," said the institute.
"Urban businessmen, international corporations, and rural pastoralists have all functioned in a stateless Somalia, achieving standards of living for the country that are equal or superior to many other African nations."
Of course many people in Somalia have suffered horribly during the past 20 years of state collapse, but some sectors of the economy, both traditional and modern, are positively booming.
It may come as another surprise that two northern Somali ports account for 95% of all goat and 52% of all sheep exports for the entire East African region.
According to the London-based Chatham House think-tank, the export of livestock through these ports, and the nearby port of Djibouti, represents what "is said to be the largest movement of live animal - 'on the hoof' - trade anywhere in the world".
I recently visited one of these ports, Berbera, in the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, where port manager Ali Xoorxoor told me: "I expect livestock exports from the port to increase dramatically from three million head of livestock in 2011 to 4.5 million in 2012.
"This is because of healthy demand from the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, and new markets emerging in Egypt, Syria and Oman. The Egyptians are especially fond of our camels, mainly for meat."
The livestock trade has exploded since Somalia's government imploded in 1991.
One trader told me exports from the northern ports alone is worth more than $2bn (£1.3bn) a year; this does not appear to be an exaggeration, when one considers that just one sheep is worth at least $30 and a camel several hundred.
Academic Peter Little found what he described as a "spectacular surge" in cross-border cattle trade from Somalia to Kenya, where cattle sales in the Kenyan town of Garissa, near the border with Somalia, grew by an "astounding" 600% in the years following the collapse of central authority.
In his book, Somalia: Economy without State, Mr Little describes how "a freewheeling, stateless capitalism" has flourished in the country.
On their way to market, Somali nomads drive their livestock through hundreds of kilometres of harsh, hostile terrain, much of it occupied by militias including the Islamist group, al-Shabab.
These nomads know how to negotiate their way through enemy territory; perhaps they have a thing or two to teach Somali politicians and international agencies struggling to get aid to those who need it most.
Another traditional area of the Somali economy which has thrived in a stateless society, and could serve as a useful model, is the khat trade, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
This narcotic leaf, grown in Kenya and Ethiopia, is delivered fresh, with tremendous efficiency, to remote parts of Somalia, including those affected by drought and famine.
Special "khat planes", pick-up trucks and people on foot ensure khat gets to market before noon, the day after it is picked.
Otherwise, the khat-chewers will not buy it.
The local authorities and international aid agencies could learn something from those in the khat business about how to deliver supplies, perhaps of food, medicine and other essential items, to difficult and dangerous areas.
As Somali analyst Nuradin Dirie says: "The khat network reaches every corner of Somalia every day of the year and doesn't stop for wars, drought, floods, epidemics, Friday prayers, Ramadan - anything really.
"I suggested to the UN that it could make use of khat networks to vaccinate children as this would create an opportunity for 100% vaccination coverages.
"Of course I did not succeed," he says.
"I have travelled quite a lot inside Somalia. To little villages and big towns, to far away rural areas and to remote coastal outposts.
"Wherever I go, I always manage to get a cold Coca-Cola. If they can store cool Coca-Cola, there is a strong possibility they can handle vaccinations too."
Other more modern sectors of the economy are also thriving.
Somalia has one of the cheapest, most efficient mobile phone networks in Africa.
It is home to Dahabshiil, one of the largest money transfer companies on the continent, which together with other remittance outfits, delivers some $2bn worth of remittances to Somali territories a year, according to the UN.
Like the khat traders, remittance companies deliver money to remote and treacherous places all over Somalia.
Some humanitarian groups use these companies to deliver cash-for-food and other forms of assistance; perhaps more use could be made of these pre-existing remittance networks, which link Somalis together, wherever they are in the world, connecting them in a matter of minutes.
There is a startling contrast between the productive, can-do attitude of the Somali business community, and the sometimes obstructive, counter-productive approach of the politicians.
Members of the Somali diaspora, and those who stayed behind during the long years of conflict, are doing daring, imaginative and positive things.
A group of British-educated brothers from the self-declared republic of Somaliland has built a Coca-Cola bottling plant amongst the sand, anthills and cacti, creating a surreal environment of green lawns, gleaming white walls, glossy red paint, and polished factory floors.
A pioneering young woman has recently set up an art gallery in Hargeisa.
Another has opened up a boutique, where smartly dressed attendants sell shoes, handbags, brightly coloured lingerie, and men's and women's clothes in the very latest Somali fashion.
A man in Mogadishu runs a Billiards and Snooker Federation.
There are also political models and inspirations on offer within the Somali territories.
The most striking is Somaliland, which broke away from Somalia in 1991, and has built itself up from war-torn rubble into probably the most democratic polity in the Horn of Africa.
It has done this on its own, from the bottom-up, combining the old with the new, to create a political system that gives authority to clan elders as well as those elected by the public.
The Somali business community and places like Somaliland have "worked" because they have married the best of the traditional and the modern.
Much that has "failed" in Somalia is a result of combining the "bad", divisive things about the traditional clan system with dangerous modern elements, especially weapons.
It might be more productive for anyone interested in helping Somalia back onto its feet, including those at the London Conference, to deal with and learn from the business community instead of the politicians.
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4e4b1745be2de783222d2ef30fee852d | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17192212 | Tuareg rebels make troubled return from Libya to Mali | Tuareg rebels make troubled return from Libya to Mali
The hot season is fast approaching in northern Niger and the sun burns into the flimsy roofs of the refugee tents, the plastic sheeting an incongruous blue against the few stems of green on trees and the dun colour of the sandy ground.
Seventy-year-old Mohammed Islamta arranges his few meagre possessions carefully in the dust; a mat, a cooking pot and traditional Tuareg tea-pot and stove, the only things he managed to bring as he fled his home near Menaka in Mali just over a month ago.
"I left all my animals - a donkey and five goats behind. It was a very difficult decision," he says, "but we saw people fleeing and we didn't want to stay to see what happened."
This remote corner of parched scrub seems far removed from the dramatic events in Sirte last October, as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was dragged from a sewer, called a rat and beaten to death by fighters from the then rebel National Transitional Council.
Contamination
But, for seasoned observers, the arrival of these refugees is the beginning of the nightmare scenario that many feared would follow the Libyan conflict.
The refugees who arrived in Mangaize, in northern Niger, are fleeing clashes between Malian ethnic Tuareg rebels from the newly-formed National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) and the national army which broke out in January 2012.
Some 130,000 people have fled their homes, according to the UN refugee agency.
These Tuaregs had, until September, been busy fighting alongside Col Gaddafi's forces as he struggled to cling to power in Libya.
They had taken sanctuary in Libya after their own rebellion in Mali in 2008 was defeated.
But as Col Gaddafi's luck began to turn south, they picked up the spoils of war around them and headed in the same direction; straight into the deserts of northern Mali, already unstable following attacks from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
The contamination does not stop there.
Niger - now hosting some 23,000 refugees - is worried that its own Tuareg population may rise up in rebellion, inspired by the MNLA.
A former rebellion in northern Niger led by the MNJ (Nigerien Movement for Justice), with links to the Malian Tuaregs, wreaked havoc in the north from 2007-9.
"We're upset that the Malians have allowed this situation to get out of control," says Bazoum Mohammed, Niger's foreign minister.
"Everyone knew this situation was coming; everyone knew that AQIM was present in the region; everyone knew that the Tuareg rebellion from 2008 in Mali had not been decapitated. And yet the Malians did not act."
Brief respite
Former fighters from the MNJ were among a convoy that arrived in northern Niger in September, bringing Col Gaddafi's own son Saadi to safety.
But, despite the evident dangers, Niger's authorities seem to have chosen to fight.
Patrols in the far-flung north of the country have been stepped up, and in the months following Col Gaddafi's fall from Tripoli, many ex-fighters from Libya coming into Niger were disarmed.
Regular surveillance flights supported by the US Pan-Sahelian Counter Terrorism Initiative patrol the skies, looking for unusual movements.
And former rebels have been integrated into government - the new prime minister appointed in April 2011 is a Tuareg, as are most of the local officials in Agadez.
"We dealt with the Tuareg problem better than Mali did," says Mr Mohammed. "There will be no repeat here."
Niger is hoping that its efforts will be matched by those of regional powers, with Niger calling for a regional force to be sent to Mali at a recent summit of the West African body, Ecowas .
Most observers agree that Niger's strong actions have reduced the imminent danger of a Tuareg rebellion within its own territory.
But, without concerted action in neighbouring Mali, Niger's respite may only be brief.
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912caba4320b97b10f78435d0fca251a | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17221650 | Charles Taylor Liberia war crimes verdict date set | Charles Taylor Liberia war crimes verdict date set
The verdict in the war crimes trial of Liberia's ex-President Charles Taylor will be delivered on 26 April, the UN-backed court trying him has said.
Mr Taylor is accused of fuelling Sierra Leone's civil war in the 1990s by arming rebels.
He denies 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It is the first international trial of an African former head of state, and Mr Taylor could spend the rest of his life in prison if found guilty.
His trial, at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, relates to his alleged role in the brutal civil war in Liberia's neighbour, where he is accused of backing rebels responsible for widespread atrocities.
The court hearings in The Hague included a testimony by supermodel Naomi Campbell about a gift of diamonds she had received. Mr Taylor is accused of trading in so-called "blood diamonds" to fund the rebels.
Mr Taylor denies all wrongdoing, describing the allegations against him as politically motivated.
If convicted, Mr Taylor would serve a prison sentence in the UK.
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492e97d0605f305e58d55d553f2a41b6 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17295078 | Uganda rebel Joseph Kony target of viral campaign video | Uganda rebel Joseph Kony target of viral campaign video
A campaign by US activists to capture alleged Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony has gone viral on the web.
Invisible Children's
half-hour film
on the use of child soldiers by Kony's Lord's Resistance Army has been viewed nearly 40 million times on YouTube.
The group aims to bring Kony to justice at the International Criminal Court, where he is charged with crimes against humanity.
Critics, however, have questioned the methods of the non-profit group.
The hashtags #stopkony and #kony2012 were among top trending topics on Twitter on Wednesday as the campaign took off.
A number of celebrities, including
P Diddy
and
Rihanna
, tweeted links to the video.
Kony's forces are accused of atrocities in four African countries: Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.
US President Barack Obama in October 2011 announced he was sending 100 special forces soldiers to Uganda to help track down Kony.
However, Invisible Children was accused of spending most of its raised funds on salaries, travel expenses and film-making.
Bloggers also pointed out that NGO watchdog Charity Navigator had given the group only
two out of four stars
for financial accountability.
And an
article in Foreign Affairs
which accused Invisible Children and other non-profits of having "manipulated facts for strategic purposes" was circulated on the web.
Invisible Children
posted a blog
to answer the criticism.
Jedediah Jenkins, of Invisible Children, told the Washington Post that
criticism of the group was "myopic"
.
Joseph Kony and his close aides have been wanted by the ICC in The Hague since 2005.
Their campaign of terror began in northern Uganda more than 20 years ago when they said they were fighting for a biblical state and the rights of the Acholi people.
The LRA is listed by the US as a terrorist organisation and now operates mainly in neighbouring countries.
The group is notorious for kidnapping children, forcing the boys to become fighters and using girls as sex slaves.
Kony refused to sign a peace deal with the Ugandan government in 2008 when it could not guarantee the withdrawal of the ICC arrest warrants.
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6e16c561a99de8cd35cf14567a1e0520 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17315157 | South Africa education crisis fuels state school exodus | South Africa education crisis fuels state school exodus
South Africa's education and finance ministers are being taken to court over poor standards at state schools. The BBC's Karen Allen investigates the education crisis and why some parents in Eastern Cape province are opting to send their children to private schools despite the cost.
"We are not a flashy family - I'm just an ordinary kid," says Simanye Zondani, 17, as he pores over his maths homework in the subdued light of his home.
Since his parents died, his aunt has given up her smart "bachelorette" flat in Queenstown and opted instead for a house in the township.
It means she can now just about afford the £700 ($1,100) to send her nephew to private school.
Five thousand children, most of them from black families on modest incomes, are switching to independent schools annually.
The quality varies, but in Gauteng province alone, South Africa's economic hub, more than 100 new schools have applied for registration in the past year.
It is a response to a sense of failure in the state sector, argues Peter Bosman, the principal of Getahead High School, the low-cost private school which Simanye attends.
"Parents want consistency and quality," he says - not with a sense of schadenfreude but resignation.
The irony is that significant numbers of parents who send their children to private schools are themselves teachers in the state sector.
For the past few years, the school has achieved pass rates of 83%-100% for the secondary school-leaving certificate known as matric.
It is an impressive figure and is replicated among other low-cost private schools in deprived areas.
Nationally, fewer than half of all school leavers pass that exam - an indictment of an education system that is dysfunctional, critics say.
Far from being well-endowed with land and smart buildings, Getahead High is situated in a disused warehouse.
It offers computers and sports facilities, which the vast majority of children who attend state schools can only dream of. But the principal insists it is not about bricks and mortar, but the quality of teachers.
Many of the staff have returned from retirement to teach at the school and earn 10% less than their counterparts in the state sector.
About 30km (18 miles) down the road, a rural state school, Nonkqubela Secondary, is struggling with outdoor pit latrines which have fallen into disrepair, while a third of all teaching posts remain vacant.
"We used to have good results, but we are short of maths teachers, science teachers and when staff look at our facilities they decide not to come here," head teacher Khumzi Madikane laments.
He says he cannot blame parents who can afford it, migrating to the private sector. But most of his pupils are dirt poor.
Education in the Eastern Cape is in crisis, and the central government has taken over the running of the department after allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
It is a sad indictment of a rural slice of South Africa which in the past century gave birth to some of the greatest minds in history, including Nelson Mandela and the late freedom fighter Walter Sisulu.
But the Eastern Cape is not alone. The growth of low-cost primary schools, in response to a lack of faith in the state sector, is a trend that is spreading across the country. The independent sector has grown by 75% in the past decade.
"It's been driven by parent demand," argues Ann Bernstein from the Johannesburg-based think tank, Centre for Development and Enterprise.
The crisis no longer a dirty little secret, with the government itself admitting that 80% of state schools are failing.
In a recent speech, Basic Education Minister Angie Motsheka revealed that 1,700 schools are still without a water supply and 15,000 schools are without libraries.
Last week, campaign group Equal Education launched a court case to force the government to provide equal infrastructure at all schools.
Ms Motsheka has already promised reforms and investment in infrastructure, but it is a Herculean task.
It also requires political courage, argues Ms Bernstein.
"We have research from various communities, and increasingly from government, saying that in many places, teachers are not in school on Mondays or Fridays, that many teachers have other jobs simultaneously and the actual amount of teaching going on in the classrooms is a fraction of what it should be," she says.
Political courage, it would seem, means tackling the unions.
Yet education in South Africa still suffers from the legacy of apartheid, where black children suffered inferior education to their white counterparts and were banned from certain subjects and deprived of good facilities.
But more than 17 years after the end of white minority rule, observers argue that South Africa is struggling with more recent phenomena: Poor teacher training, corruption and maladministration, a highly unionised teaching profession and low morale.
Back in the township, opting for a private school has come with huge sacrifices for Simanye's aunt, Nokwezi.
"I've really had to squeeze myself but it is worth it - in state schools, if they have a disagreement the teachers go on strike," she says.
The surge of low-cost private schools shows no sign of slowing down. Thousands of other grandmothers, brothers and sisters are scraping together the funds to send a child to school.
Yet the vast majority of South African children have little choice but to opt for the local state school.
Despite the best efforts of some committed staff, the exodus from state schools could see a generation of underachievers left behind.
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16182303b0f461172c02c0a669140680 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17462107 | Ex-Tuareg leader Aghali Alambo in Niger arrest | Ex-Tuareg leader Aghali Alambo in Niger arrest
A former Tuareg rebel who became a close aide of ex-Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been arrested by authorities in Niger.
Police said Aghali Alambo was suspected of involvement in smuggling arms and explosives from Libya.
Mr Alambo led a Tuareg uprising in Niger several years ago that ended after Libyan mediation.
Tuareg rebels in neighbouring Mali are currently fighting for an autonomous Azawad region in the north.
The Tuareg are a historically nomadic people, who live in the Sahara and Sahel regions of North Africa, and often complain that they are marginalised.
They have had militant groups in Mali and Niger engaged in sporadic armed struggles for several decades.
A source told the Reuters news agency: "Aghali Alambo will be questioned on charges of ties to criminal groups, financing terrorism, arms trafficking."
Mr Alambo led a Tuareg rebellion against the government of Niger from 2007 to 2009.
A peace accord was brokered by the former Libyan leader.
After the fighting ended, the former Tuareg rebel exiled himself in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, where he became one of Col Gaddafi's trusted aides.
Col Gaddafi died after being caught by rebel forces in his home town of Sirte in October.
Mr Alambo remained by the former Libyan leader's side until shortly before the fall of Tripoli last year.
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d1d45edb093e020e11bc031236f15407 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17508098 | Senegal's President-elect Macky Sall hails 'new era' | Senegal's President-elect Macky Sall hails 'new era'
The winner of Senegal's presidential election, Macky Sall, has said the poll marks a "new era" for the country.
He was speaking after his rival, current President Abdoulaye Wade, admitted defeat in Sunday's run-off.
Mr Wade's bid for a third term in office sparked violent protests which left six people dead.
Speaking in front of thousands of cheering supporters in the capital Dakar, Mr Sall, 50, promised to be a president for all Senegalese.
Official results from Sunday's election are expected within two days.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of Senegal's former colonial ruler, France, hailed the result as being "good news for Africa in general and for Senegal in particular".
"Senegal is a major African country and a model of democracy," he said.
The election comes just days after a military coup in neighbouring Mali.
Senegal remains the only country in West Africa to have never undergone a coup.
Thijs Berman, the head of the European Union observer mission to Senegal, said the results were very clear - about 65% for Mr Sall and 35% for Mr Wade so "there is no hesitation as to who is the winner".
Mr Sall stressed that the people were the main winners in the poll.
Mr Wade had "phoned his rival Macky Sall at 21:30 GMT [on Sunday] to congratulate him after the first results showed him to be the winner of a presidential run-off," the Senegalese Press Agency said.
Mr Wade, 85, has governed Senegal for 12 years.
Even before Mr Wade's concession, thousands of Sall supporters began celebrating on the streets of Dakar.
They chanted "Macky president!" and "We have won!"
Mr Wade brought in a two-term limit for presidential office, but argued that the limit should not apply to his first term which came in before the constitution was changed.
His argument was upheld by the constitutional court in January, prompting widespread protests in which six people died.
In February's first round, Mr Wade fell short of a majority, polling only 34.8%. Mr Sall came second with 26.6%. But most of the other 12 candidates backed Mr Sall in the second round.
Mr Sall owes his political career to Mr Wade, and had held several ministry portfolios before becoming prime minister, the BBC's Thomas Fessy reports from Dakar.
But the two men fell out over the handling of public spending by Karim Wade, the president's unpopular son, whom many believe has been trying to succeed his father, our correspondent adds.
Mr Sall has promised that, if elected, he will shorten the presidential term to five years from the current seven, and enforce the two-term limit. He has also promised to bring in measures to reduce the price of basic foodstuffs.
The new leader also faces the difficult task of tackling rising unemployment in the country, our correspondent says.
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e0da744d4ed4682e622b16fe9f2aa084 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17509978 | South African Motherwell rugby players in drowning | South African Motherwell rugby players in drowning
A South African club rugby player drowned and five of his team-mates are missing feared dead after being swept out to sea off the south coast.
The players from Motherwell Rugby Club went swimming following a beach practice session in Port Elizabeth.
South African Rugby Union President Oregan Hoskins called it a "tragedy".
Fifteen people, including members of the public, were rescued after being pulled out to sea at Blue Water Bay Beach.
The National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) saved those caught up in rip currents shortly after midday on Sunday, the South African Press Association (Sapa) said.
The dead man and the five still missing are all thought to be in their early 20s.
A rescue helicopter and emergency patrol boats are scouring the waters off Port Elizabeth to find the missing.
Mr Hoskins told Sapa: "These young men were preparing to compete in a Saru [South African Rugby Union] Easter Tournament in Cape Town in a fortnight and were enjoying a carefree day on the beach with their team-mates.
"To have their afternoon turned into a day of tragedy is shocking for the whole rugby community and our thoughts and prayers go out to their families."
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8dc0812f7ca36d1265ba350ce575faa7 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17513065 | Is Africa on trial? | Is Africa on trial?
The International Criminal Court (ICC) was set up to try those responsible for the most serious crimes in the world - such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
So far, all 24 people facing charges - and the only person convicted - are from Africa, leading to accusations of bias. The African Union has said members countries should stop cooperating with the Court.
We asked two experts whether Africa is on trial.
Abdul Tejan-Cole is a former prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Two weeks ago, the International Criminal Court (ICC) handed down its first judgment - finding Thomas Lubanga Dyilo guilty of war crimes in eastern DR Congo. While the decision was rightly hailed around the world as a landmark for international criminal justice and the fight against impunity for mass crimes, it also reignited the debate about the ICC and Africa - and particularly the notion that the continent is somehow "on trial".
It is a version of events that has increasingly come to dominate the debate in Africa with political leaders past and present publicly accusing the ICC of anti-African bias and of persecuting the continent through its prosecutions. But it is almost certainly not the view of the majority of Africans, who want the political and military leaders responsible for international crimes brought to justice.
And it is definitely not the view of the victims of mass crimes - such as the 129 who participated in the Lubanga trial - who know that their national courts are invariably unable or unwilling to prosecute. And who celebrated when the ICC announced its landmark verdict.
Lubanga is the first person to have been convicted since the ICC was established in 2002. The Court found him guilty of enlisting, conscripting and using child soldiers between 2002 and 2003 when he was Commander-in-Chief of the notoriously brutal Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC). Multiple witnesses testified that Lubanga used these children as his bodyguards and that girl soldiers were subjected to sexual violence and rape.
But even as his victims were finally seeing justice being done, critics were condemning the ICC for taking so long and for costing so much, and castigating the prosecutor for not charging Lubanga with sexual violence crimes, despite allegations that women and girls were raped and abused by his forces. Others were wondering when some of Lubanga's co-perpetrators, notably his Rwandan deputy, Bosco Ntaganda, might face trial.
Until his conviction, Lubanga was one of 25 people facing trial in 14 different cases before the ICC. All 25 are Africans. This has generated increasing criticism. The African Union Chair, Jean Ping, has accused the ICC of targeting African leaders unfairly, while the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, dismissed the Court saying it was made for Africans and poor countries.
Africa played a tremendous role in the establishment of the ICC, and only 11 African countries have not signed the Rome Statute while 33 have ratified its provisions, making Africa the most heavily represented region in its membership.
Three of the seven current situations under investigations by the Court - DR Congo, Uganda and the Central African Republic - were self-referrals to the Court by the respective governments. According to the Court's incoming Prosecutor, The Gambia's Fatou Bensouda, "the high rate of referrals in Africa could just as easily show that leaders on the continent were taking their responsibilities to international justice seriously."
Only two situations - Kenya and Ivory Coast - were opened at the instance of the prosecutor. The Kenya situation was opened after Kofi Annan, Chairman of the AU Panel of Eminent African Personalities, handed over a sealed list of suspects to the ICC and after the Kenyan parliament dithered over the establishment of a national tribunal.
In Ivory Coast, it was former President Laurent Gbagbo who accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC in April 2003 under the provisions of Article 12 (3) of the Rome Statute.
Like many other African leaders, Mr Gbagbo was quick to accept the jurisdiction of the Court so that it could prosecute rebels.
However, as soon as he was arrested and hauled off to The Hague, his supporters immediately began referring to the ICC as the "White man's Court" and complaining about its "neo-colonialist" and "imperialist" agenda.
Contrary to popular opinion, the ICC is not a court of first resort. Entrenched in its statutes is the principle of complementarity - the ICC can only exercise its jurisdiction where the State Party of which the accused is a national or on whose soil the alleged crime was committed, is unable or unwilling to prosecute.
Many African countries will be unable to prosecute even if they want to because their judiciaries lack the capacity to prosecute the crimes in the Rome Statute and because their parliaments have failed to domesticate the relevant laws.
In the case of Kenya, even though Kofi Annan and others supported a "Kenyan-owned and Kenyan-led process", the country's parliament failed to pass the necessary laws to create a Special Tribunal thus giving the ICC jurisdiction.
Even though its criteria for selecting situations does not include geographical considerations, the perception that the Court is only targeting Africans will remain until it launches its first non-African prosecution.
And while it is true that the ICC can be lambasted for inconsistent case selection, there is not a single case before the Court that one could dismiss as being frivolous or vexatious.
They might all be African but they are also all legitimate. It is farcical that we can equate the trial of 25 accused with the trial of an entire continent.
In addition, the Court is currently analysing at least five situations outside Africa - including Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, Honduras and South Korea - all of which are awaiting determination by the prosecutor as to whether or not to open formal investigations.
The Palestinian National Authority has also petitioned the ICC prosecutor to accept jurisdiction over alleged crimes in Gaza from 1 July 2002, when the Rome Statute entered into force.
The Court has certainly made some missteps in its first decade. For example, the judges in the Lubanga trial were far from impressed by the prosecutor's use of intermediaries during the investigation.
And there is clearly a need to ensure greater balance in the geographical scope of the ICC's investigations and prosecutions. But there is not a case before the Court that critics can honestly argue should not be there.
And ordinary Africans are not complaining. Many have suffered at the hands of the perpetrators of mass crimes - and know that there is little chance that they will see justice done without international tribunals like the ICC.
Victims of the alleged atrocities of Chad's former President, Hissene Habre, have for several years been lobbying the Senegalese government to ensure that justice is done - but to little avail.
Had Mr Habre's alleged crimes been committed after 1 July 2002, his victims may have had their day in court just like Lubanga's.
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b73c952965e0264437964caec65df2a5 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17517113 | Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda edges away from Sharia | Tunisia's Islamist Ennahda edges away from Sharia
Officials from the largest party in Tunisia's governing coalition have said they will not support moves to enshrine Islamic law in the new constitution.
Senior members of the moderate Islamist Ennahda Party said the wording of the old constitution, which proclaims Islam as the state religion, would remain.
A group of ultra-conservative Muslims known as Salafis had demanded the introduction of Sharia.
Ennahda has been under growing pressure to declare its position on the issue.
The BBC's Jon Leyne says that the news will disappoint the increasingly vocal conservative minority, but it will bring relief to liberals and secularists who fear a tide of Islamism sweeping across the region.
"Ennahda has decided to retain the first clause of the previous constitution without change," senior Ennahda official Ameur Larayed told local media.
"We want the unity of our people and we do not want divisions."
The article from the 1959 constitution states: "Tunisia is a free, sovereign and independent state, whose religion is Islam, language is Arabic and has a republican regime."
Another senior figure, Ziad Doulatli, said he hoped the decision would help Tunisia to "serve as a model for other countries going through similar transformations".
Some 10,000 Salafis took to the streets of the capital, Tunis, on Sunday to express their support for the proposal that the country's legislation should be based on Islamic law.
The Tunisian uprising last January, which unseated long-time President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, inspired a wave of pro-democracy movements across North African and the Middle East.
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e1847aff97705c7d6b0c48373513caa4 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17589021 | Angola: Ten years of peace but at what price? | Angola: Ten years of peace but at what price?
There may be much that is shiny and new in Angola, but 10 years after the end of the war many ghosts remain, as Louise Redvers reports for BBC Focus on Africa magazine.
It is a milestone that at one time few would have thought possible. On 4 April, Angola marks a decade since the end of the 27-year civil war which devastated the country, claiming countless lives and displacing millions.
The conflict involved three different liberation movements and saw intervention from the former Soviet Union, Cuba, the United States and apartheid South Africa.
How times have changed. Today Angola can now boast of a booming economy - forecast to grow 12% this year - and a growing regional and international diplomatic profile.
Angola's physical transformation since the end of the war has also been immense.
Oil revenues and associated Chinese loans have bankrolled an ambitious national reconstruction programme of roads, airports, bridges, hospitals and schools.
In the sprawling cities, where the war-weary sought refuge during the height of the conflict, urban slums are being given a facelift.
And once productive agricultural fields are now being cleared of landmines ready for replanting; industries like cotton and coffee are being revived and old copper, iron and gold mines are being re-opened for prospection.
Meanwhile, foreign investors are flocking to Angola hoping to share in the boom times and Luanda's tiny Fourth of February airport is overwhelmed by new flights coming from across Africa as well as Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
The president of nearly 33 years, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, and his MPLA party remain the dominant power in the country, having claimed a military victory over rivals Unita following the death of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in February 2002.
Senior members of the MPLA - which won an 82% majority in the 2008 legislative election, the second in Angola's history - have a tight grip over all aspects of the country's economy and both state and private media are heavily biased in the government's favour.
On paper, and in the view of the ruling party, Angola is an African success story - an example of how a war-torn nation can rebuild itself in peace.
In fact Mr Dos Santos sees himself as a regional elder and this year holds the presidency of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Angola is now even helping to rescue its former colonial power, Portugal, which has been hit hard by the Eurozone crisis and is selling off state and private assets to raise cash. But scratch below the surface and the picture is less pretty.
Despite the country's rapid economic growth - rated as faster than China's during the past decade - it is estimated that up to half the country still live on less than $2 (£1.25) a day.
There may be vast new housing estates with neat gardens and swimming pools springing up around the country, but for the majority of Angolans, home is a shared bed in an unpaved, overcrowded slum with limited access to running water, sanitation or electricity.
Unemployment remains stubbornly high and despite huge investments, the roll-out of mass education is yet to yield tangible benefits. Health services also remain severely limited. This is due to a lack of skilled professionals as well as pervasive corruption.
Rates of child mortality have decreased significantly since the end of the war, but one in five youngsters still die before their fifth birthday and the country remains near the bottom of the United Nations Human Development Index, ranked 148 out of 187 countries.
"In 10 years of peace the government has not delivered a true peace dividend to the Angolan people," says Paula Roque, a political analyst and Angolan expert at Oxford University.
"It makes no sense that Angola should continue with the level of poverty we are seeing when there is so much money coming from oil."
But for Ms Roque the issue goes deeper than poverty alleviation. She questions just how peaceful and reconciled Angola really is when the ruling party has, since the end of the war, silenced all narratives except its own and imposed on the population what she calls a "superficial society".
It is true that Angola's school-taught official history belongs to the MPLA, as do the nation's symbols like its flag and national anthem.
This is a point Unita, now a parliamentary opposition party, tried to contest during the drafting of the country's new constitution in 2010.
Perhaps emblematic of this is the continuing fight carried out by Mr Savimbi's supporters to return his remains to his home town for an official burial.
All the while the government is pouring millions of dollars into a mausoleum and a museum for the country's first President Agostinho Neto who died in 1979 and is hailed as a national hero.
Justin Pearce, from the London School of Oriental and African Studies, shares the view that while Angola looks "remarkably peaceful" it has in fact undergone no formal or deliberate reconciliation process.
"The general message from the government is that now the war is over, everything else will look after itself," he explains, adding that the deep complexity of past allegiances have also made people reluctant to confront their past for fear of creating trouble for themselves or their families.
Mr Pearce highlights that during the war members of the same family may have been actively involved in Unita and in the MPLA, and a person may even have been involved in both parties at different times of his or her life.
"The soldiers who fought in the war had mostly been conscripted and had no choice in the matter and at a civilian level - if you were captured, or if a different army took control of the place where you were working, then your own survival depended on professing loyalty to and working for that side," he says.
Mr Pearce, who has interviewed former soldiers in central Angola, points out that integration and reconciliation appears to be very much on the MPLA's terms.
Ms Roque adds: "There has been no conciliated narrative about the war or Angola's past. It is still struggling to define who it is and there's very serious discontent at many levels."
This discontent showed its face last year when a group of young Angolans staged rare protests against the government and called for the resignation of the president, who vies with Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea for the unenviable title of Africa's longest-serving leader.
Although small in size and quickly put down by Angola's notoriously tough police force, the demonstrations revealed a free-thinking new generation which is not afraid of the MPLA or scarred by war experiences.
The party reacted by accusing those involved of trying to destroy the peace process and promote "national insurrection".
State media was filled with religious leaders calling for peace to be restored and political figures condemning what they said were "acts of criminal insubordination" that threatened the country's stability.
Ms Roque suggests that the MPLA has actually taken "ownership" of the country's relative peace as a commodity, and is fiercely protective of it.
There is growing consensus, however, that it is the ruling party itself which is increasingly unstable, unsure of how to deal with this new wave of criticism which challenges its hegemony and threatens its access to state resources.
Angola is scheduled to go to the polls later this year. There is little doubt the MPLA will win.
This is as much down to the weakness of the opposition as to the ruling party's likely manipulation of the voting process. But it is what follows next that is critical.
"There are cracks appearing in the MPLA's system of governance and I truly believe that change is coming to Angola," says Ms Roque.
"There are many ghosts and all are the ingredients for a palace coup. We have to hope the change will come through dialogue and not violence."
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5211c81975c1aa05195d94da31219963 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17642276 | Mali coup leaders to stand down as part of Ecowas deal | Mali coup leaders to stand down as part of Ecowas deal
Coup leaders in Mali have agreed to stand down and allow a transition to civilian rule, as part of a deal struck with regional bloc Ecowas.
In return, the bloc will lift trade and economic sanctions and grant amnesty to the ruling junta, mediators said.
The move came after Tuareg rebels in the north declared independence of an area they call Azawad.
The rebels seized the area after a coup two weeks ago plunged the West African nation into political crisis.
Under the terms of transition plan, military rulers will cede power to the parliamentary speaker, Diouncounda Traore, who as interim president will oversee a timetable for elections.
Once sworn in, Mr Traore would have 40 days to organise elections, the five-page agreement says.
The deal, signed by coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo, states that Ecowas prepare for the ending of sanctions, but did not name a date for Capt Sanogo to hand over power.
"It will be necessary to organise a political transition leading to free, democratic and transparent elections across the whole of the territory," it states.
Officers led by Captain Sanogo seized power on 22 March, accusing the elected government of not doing enough to halt the rebellion in the north.
Earlier, international bodies rejected a call from Tuareg rebels for their newly named region of Azawad to be recognised as independent.
The secular National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) is one of two main groups fighting a rebellion in the north.
Ansar Dine, an Islamist group, has also made gains and has started to impose Sharia law in some towns.
Rights group Amnesty International has warned of a major humanitarian disaster in the wake of the rebellion.
Ecowas is preparing a force of up to 3,000 soldiers which could be deployed to stop the rebel advance.
France's Defence Minister, Gerard Longuet, said France could provide assistance to the force, including transport, Reuters news agency reports.
The Tuareg people inhabit the Sahara Desert in northern Mali, as well as several neighbouring countries and have fought several rebellions over the years.
They complain that they have been ignored by the authorities in the capital, Bamako.
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4b483be2657a8ed64d0ee292689ff9dc | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17662916 | Joyce Banda: Malawi's first female president | Joyce Banda: Malawi's first female president
Joyce Banda, who has made history becoming Malawi's first female president and only the second woman to lead a country in Africa, has a track record of fighting for women's rights.
She took power over the weekend following the death of 78-year-old President Bingu wa Mutharika, who died in office after heading up the southern Africa country since 2004.
Mr Mutharika's decision to appoint her as his running mate for the 2009 elections surprised many in Malawi's mainly conservative, male-dominated society - which had never before had a female vice-president.
Equally surprising was her decision to publicly stand up to her boss - by refusing to endorse his plans for his brother, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Mutharika, to succeed him as president in 2014 when he was due to retire.
She was promptly thrown out of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party - and subjected to daily doses of derision at public rallies and on Malawi's state airwaves.
A senior ruling party official openly said Malawi was "not ready for a female president", while First Lady Callista Mutharika said Mrs Banda was fooling herself that she was a serious politician - saying she was a mere market woman selling fritters.
"She will never be president, how can a mandasi [fritter] seller be president?" Mrs Mutharika said.
Mrs Banda took all this in her stride, saying she was glad to be identified with market women since more than 80% of Malawian women belong to that category: "Yes, she's right, I'm indeed a mandasi seller and I'm proud of it because the majority of women in Malawi are like us, mandasi sellers."
She also resisted calls for her to resign as the country's vice-president - she was elected not appointed so she could not be fired by Mr Mutharika - and instead set up her own People's Party.
Born in 1950 in the village of Malemia near the southern town of Zomba, Joyce Hilda Ntila was the eldest in a family of five children.
Her father was the leader of Malawi's police brass band and her youngest sister, Anjimile, ran pop star Madonna's charity Raising Malawi until it closed in December.
She left her first husband in 1981, taking her three children with her, because he was abusive.
"Most African women are taught to endure abusive marriages. They say endurance means a good wife but most women endure abusive relationship because they are not empowered economically, they depend on their husbands," she told the BBC about her decision.
Eight years later, Mrs Banda founded the National Association of Business Women, a group that lends start-up cash to small-scale traders - making her popular among Malawi's many rural poor.
That work also earned her international recognition - in 1997, she was awarded, along with former Mozambican President Joachim Chissano, the US-based Hunger Project's Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger.
She also set up the Joyce Banda Foundation, a charity that assists Malawian children and orphans through education - she has a degree in early childhood education.
Joyce Banda cut her teeth in politics in 1999 when she won a parliamentary seat on the ticket of the former ruling United Democratic Front.
She held a number of cabinet positions under former President Bakili Muluzi and Mr Mutharika during his first term.
She puts her achievements down to her happy marriage to retired Chief Justice Richard Banda with whom she has two children.
"My dear husband, Richard, has been the driving force behind my success and rise to whatever level I am now. My story and legacy is incomplete without his mention," she said.
Mrs Banda's presidential challenges are huge: Aside from handling political divisions and possible opposition from Mr Mutharika's allies, she has to address Malawi's serious economic difficulties.
It is one of the poorest countries in the world, with an estimated 75% of the population living on less than $1 (60p) a day.
And former President Mutharika fell out with most of Western donors - on which the country depends for financial support.
The cutting off of direct aid resulted in the country's worst shortages of foreign currency, fuel and essential drugs.
But she has immediately made her mark - sacking Malawi's police chief Peter Mukhito, accused of mishandling anti-government riots last year in which at least 19 people were shot dead, and Patricia Kaliati as information minister.
In the wake of Mr Mutharika's death, Ms Kaliati had held a press conference saying Mrs Banda had no right to take over as president - despite what the constitution said.
The head of Malawi's state broadcaster has also been replaced.
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9bc26deb921c53250e6bcc0906b4b012 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18316130 | Lagos air crash: No survivors, officials say | Lagos air crash: No survivors, officials say
A passenger plane with about 150 people on board has crashed into buildings in a densely populated district of Nigeria's main city of Lagos.
Nigeria's Civil Aviation Authority said there were no survivors on board the Dana Air plane. The cause of the crash is not yet known.
Thousands of onlookers gathered at the crash site as rescue services searched the rubble for survivors.
President Goodluck Jonathan has declared three days of mourning.
The plane crashed in Iju neighbourhood, just north of the airport. It is not yet clear how many people may have died on the ground.
TV pictures showed chaotic scenes as crowds swarmed the crash site, some helping pass along hoses to douse the smoking wreckage.
Soldiers tried to disperse the onlookers using rubber whips and even their fists, witnesses said. Some local residents reacted by throwing stones at the troops.
The commercial aircraft was flying from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to Lagos when it crashed and burst into flames.
Plane wreckage including a detached wing was scattered around and the body of the plane was lodged into a building.
The wreckage was on fire and black smoke billowed.
Several charred corpses could be seen in the rubble.
"We heard a huge explosion, and at first we thought it was a gas canister," Timothy Akinyela, 50, a newspaper reporter who had been in a nearby bar with friends told Reuters.
"Then there were some more explosions afterwards and everyone ran out. It was terrifying. There was confusion and shouting," he said.
The plane did not to appear to have nose-dived into the building but to have landed on its belly, careering into a furniture shop and a print works, reports said.
Casualties on the ground may have been minimised because it was Sunday and the buildings were likely to have been empty.
An investigation is under way but in difficult night-time conditions, says the BBC's Will Ross in Lagos.
Officials told AFP the cockpit recorder had been found and given to police.
In a statement, President Jonathan declared three days of mourning and said he had ordered the "fullest possible" investigation into the crash.
The crash had "sadly plunged the nation into further sorrow on a day when Nigerians were already in grief over the loss of many other innocent lives in the church bombing in Bauchi state", the statement said.
The weather at the time of the crash was overcast - but there were none of the storms that regularly strike the city.
On 11 May a similar Dana Air plane - possibly the same one - developed a technical problem and was forced to make an emergency landing in Lagos, our correspondent adds.
Nigeria, like many African countries, has a poor air safety record, though some efforts have been made to improve it since a spate of airline disasters in 2005.
Dana Air's website says it operates Boeing MD-83 planes to cities around Nigeria out of Murtala Muhammed Airport.
The airport is a major hub for West Africa and saw 2.3 million passengers pass through it in 2009, according to the most recent statistics provided by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria.
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608c393403decbd068e1a5c08e60b716 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18490348 | Rwanda 'gacaca' genocide courts finish work | Rwanda 'gacaca' genocide courts finish work
Rwanda's community courts, known as gacaca, have finished their work, after 10 years of trying those accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide.
The courts were set up to speed up the prosecution of hundreds of thousands of genocide suspects awaiting trial.
Human rights group say the gacaca fell well short of international legal standards.
About 65% of the close to two million people tried have been found guilty, according to latest government figures.
Rwanda's legal system was left in ruins after the massacres by ethnic Hutu militia and soldiers of some 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in 100 days between April and June 1994.
The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was set up in neighbouring Tanzania to try the ringleaders of the genocide - it has convicted 54 people and acquitted eight so far. It is due to be closed down at the end of the year.
But this left hundreds of thousands of people accused of involvement in the killings, leading to an enormous backlog of cases in Rwanda.
Correspondents say up to 10,000 people died in prison before they could be brought to justice.
Community courts were set up to clear the backlog - and once a week the so-called gacaca met in villages across the country, often outdoors in a marketplace or under a tree.
The BBC's Prudent Nsengiyumva in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, says one of the main aims of the gacaca was to achieve truth, justice and reconciliation among Rwandans. Gacaca means to sit down and discuss an issue.
The hearings gave communities a chance to face the accused and give evidence about what really happened and how it happened.
Our correspondent says many people in Rwanda say this process have helped to mend the wounds of the past.
But the use of traditional grassroots courts to try complex genocide cases was also controversial - previously the gacaca had only been used to settle local disputes.
More than 160,000 judges were elected from among communities - but they lacked legal qualifications.
The Rwandan government says about two million people went through the gacaca system - final official figures about how many were found guilty are yet to be released, but data from two years ago points to a conviction rate of about 65%.
Some of those found guilty have been sentenced to long jail sentences, with hard labour.
Others have been released and sent back to help rebuild communities - and this has brought its own problems, legal experts say.
"Survivors are worried about their security because they are living side by side with those who had wanted to previously exterminate them," Albert Gasake, the Legal Advocacy Project Coordinator at the Survivors' Fund Organisation told the BBC's Network Africa programme.
"Suspicion is very high," Mr Gasake said.
He also says failure to compensate survivors for the loss of their properties poses another threat to genuine reconciliation.
Our reporter says most Rwandans do not openly criticise the gacaca system.
But local and international human rights groups have expressed concern about its fairness because trials were held without defendants having access to qualified lawyers.
The courts' closure leaves many unanswered questions, our correspondent says.
Human rights groups are asking why some members of the ruling RPF party never had to face the gacaca courts.
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666415381d4d71692eff94577eab2626 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18644745 | Aid workers kidnapped from Kenya's Dadaab camp near Somalia | Aid workers kidnapped from Kenya's Dadaab camp near Somalia
A Kenyan driver has been killed and four foreign aid workers kidnapped at a refugee camp in Kenya close to the border with Somalia, police say.
The foreigners, from Canada, Norway, Pakistan and the Philippines, worked for the Norwegian Refugee Council.
They were travelling in a convoy when they were ambushed by gunmen in Dadaab, which houses more than 450,000 Somalis.
Several aid workers have been kidnapped from Dadaab in the last year and many groups have withdrawn from the camp.
The region's deputy police chief, Philip Ndolo, said two vehicles in the convoy had come under attack - and one had managed to get away.
He told the AFP news agency that the driver of the second vehicle was shot by a gunman and died while receiving treatment at hospital, correcting earlier reports that he had also been kidnapped.
Two other Kenyans were also shot, another driver and a contractor for the Norwegian Refugee Council, Reuters news agency reports Mr Ndolo as saying.
A spokesman for the Norwegian Refugee Council said its secretary general, Elizabeth Rasmussen, was in the convoy that came under attack, but she had escaped unharmed.
Somalia has had no effective central government since 1991, and has been wracked by fighting ever since - a situation that has allowed piracy and lawlessness to flourish.
Islamists from the al-Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab control large swathes of the country.
"We suspect this could be the work of al-Shabab sympathisers," Mr Ndolo told Reuters.
Kenyan army spokesman Cyrus Oguna told AFP that the seized vehicle had been found abandoned about 30km (18 miles) from Daadab and it was believed the captives and their abductors were still inside Kenya, proceeding on foot.
"We have dispatched military helicopters to pursue the kidnappers," he said.
Last October, Kenyan troops entered Somalia in pursuit of al-Shabab militants accused of being behind various kidnappings on Kenyan soil and of destabilising the border region.
Earlier that month, two Spanish doctors working for the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres were kidnapped from Dadaab and are still being held hostage.
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d08e62d7004d325f4d6d74158fad8900 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18720207 | Somalia facing 'fresh hunger emergency' | Somalia facing 'fresh hunger emergency'
Poor rains and continuing conflict in Somalia are threatening the recovery from last year's famine, the charity Save the Children has warned.
This could put hundreds of thousands of children at risk of hunger again.
The charity called for an urgent increase in aid as a huge number of families in Somalia are still unable to cope with the effects of drought.
Last year, East Africa was hit by the region's worst drought in 60 years and many thousands of people died.
It also triggered a major refugee crisis with hundreds of thousands of Somalis fleeing rural areas, much of which are controlled by Islamist militants who have banned international aid agencies.
Many people walked over the border to camps in Kenya and Ethiopia or to Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, which is secured by African Union forces helping a UN-backed government.
On Monday, a website affiliated to the al-Qaeda group al-Shabab printed photographs of the militants burning sacks of food in the central Hiran region that it allegedly confiscated from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
It said that the food had gone bad and needed to be destroyed, the website reported.
At one stage six districts of Somalia were declared famine zones last year.
Save the Children
called for both an urgent increase in emergency help
and a new push to tackle the underlying causes of Somalia's vulnerability to hunger.
"We're going to have a very late harvest," Save the Children's Anne Mitaru told the BBC's Network Africa programme, saying this year's rains had come late and been poor.
The situation has been compounded by the fact that so many people have been displaced and the conflict which keeps food prices high, meaning families are unable to recover, she said.
The food crisis is most acute in southern regions of the country, where the al-Shabab militants are strongest.
The latest assessment from the World Bank says that outright famine is not anticipated but the situation remains serious.
Somalia has had no effective central government since 1991, and has been wracked by fighting ever since - a situation that has allowed piracy and lawlessness to flourish.
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ecfa6f1c561e4ca681be9914c41efee3 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18762918 | DR Congo rebels seize strategic town of Rutshuru | DR Congo rebels seize strategic town of Rutshuru
Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo have seized the strategic town of Rutshuru in the east of the country.
Government forces reportedly retreated as the rebels advanced.
On Friday, 600 Congolese soldiers were reported to have fled into Uganda after M23 rebels seized the DRC side of the border town of Bunagana.
The rebels, loyal to renegade Gen Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, took up arms in April.
"We appeal to the international community to do something to protect the civilians who fled the fighting and are living in fear," Omar Kavota, a local official in Rutshuru, said to the Associated Press.
Rutshuru lies 70km (43 miles) to the north of the provincial capital Goma.
An Indian peacekeeper was killed as the rebels took control of the Democratic Republic of Congo side of the town of Bunagana on Friday, the UN said.
The rebels defected from the army after pressure increased on the government to arrest Gen Ntaganda, when one of his former colleagues was convicted of recruiting child soldiers by the ICC.
Some 200,000 people have fled their homes since April, with about 20,000 crossing the border to Uganda and Rwanda.
A recent UN report has accused Rwanda of backing the rebels - Gen Ntaganda is an ethnic Tutsi, like the majority of Rwanda's leadership.
But Rwanda has vehemently denied the accusations.
Mineral-rich eastern DR Congo has suffered years of fighting since 1994, when more than a million Rwandan ethnic Hutus fled crossed the border following the genocide, in which some 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were slaughtered.
Rwanda has twice invaded its much larger neighbour, saying it was trying to take action against Hutu rebels based in DR Congo. Uganda also sent troops into DR Congo during the 1997-2003 conflict.
The current mutiny is being led by fighters from Gen Ntaganda's former rebel group the CNDP, which was integrated into the Congolese national army in 2009 as part of a peace deal.
Known as "the Terminator", Gen Ntaganda has fought for various militias over the years but has told the BBC he has no involvement in the recent army mutiny.
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92acc96e56a3c8a4ca355926b51e6ef6 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19135435 | Zambian miners kill Chinese manager during pay protest | Zambian miners kill Chinese manager during pay protest
Zambian miners have killed a Chinese manager by pushing a mine trolley at him during a riot at a coal mine in the south of the country.
A second Chinese was injured, as were several Zambians, during the riot on Saturday.
The workers were on strike at the mine in protest against delays in implementing a new minimum wage.
They were angry their wages were lower than a new minimum of $220 (£140) a month paid to shop workers.
Zambia's minister of labour has gone to the Chinese-owned Collum coal mine in Sinazongwe, 325km (200 miles) south of the capital, Lusaka.
"Wu Shengzai, aged 50, has been killed by protesting workers after being hit by a trolley which was pushed towards him by the rioting miners as he ran away into the underground where he wanted to seek refugee," Southern province police commissioner Fred Mutondo told state news agency, the Zambia News and Information Services.
"He died on the spot while his colleague is in hospital."
Last year, the Zambian government dropped charges against two Chinese managers accused of attempted murder after they fired on miners at the Collum mine during a pay dispute.
Chinese firms own several mines in southern African countries, including coal and copper operations.
Copper mining is one of Zambia's main industries, providing nearly three-quarters of the country's exports; many of the mining companies are foreign-owned, and China has invested more than $400m (£250m) in Zambia.
A 2011 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that, despite improvements in recent years, safety and labour conditions at Chinese mines were worse than at other foreign-owned mines.
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43460cf6274394f3eecc8216a22eb2bb | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19245758 | South African platinum mine union riots 'kill nine' | South African platinum mine union riots 'kill nine'
Nine people have been killed in clashes between rival unions at a South African mine owned by leading platinum producer Lonmin, police have said.
The dead included two policemen attacked by a mob, and three workers killed by officers, at the mine in North West province, police said.
The violence is linked to a battle for membership between a new and a long-established trade union.
South Africa has one of the most unionised work forces in the world.
It is also the world's biggest platinum producer, accounting for three quarters of global output.
There has been a surge in inter-union violence at mines recently.
Earlier this month, another firm, Aquarius Platinum, briefly shut one of its shafts after an attack that left three dead and at least 20 injured, Reuters news agency reports.
'Hacked to death'
Police spokesman Brigadier Thulani Ngubane told the BBC the attackers were deploying "guerrilla tactics", rapidly forming crowds to carry out attacks - in 5,000-strong mobs - before dispersing.
Lonmin said the situation was "volatile" at its Western Platinum mine, 100km (60 miles) north-west of Johannesburg.
The plant was operating at reduced capacity and was under heavy police guard, it added.
Police spokesman Brigadier Lindela Mashigo said the two policemen were killed after a mob attacked them near the mine with machetes, Reuters reports.
Police responded by opening fire, killing three protesters, he said.
"We came under attack. The suspects took our weapons. A shoot-out ensued and during that incident three suspects were fatally injured," the spokesman said.
The violence has been triggered by a turf war between the long-established National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the newly-formed Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which is more militant, analysts say.
In other cases of union violence at Western Platinum mine, two security guards were hacked to death on Sunday and another two had recently been burnt to death, Brigadier Ngubane told the BBC.
At least three people were killed in a similar round of violence in January that led to a six-week closure of the world's largest platinum mine, run by Impala Platinum, Reuters reports.
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abde97c3e8f146bd07f7c334dcfd03ec | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19336176 | Meles Zenawi death: Ethiopia 'stable', says government | Meles Zenawi death: Ethiopia 'stable', says government
Ethiopia's government has insisted the country is stable following the death of long-time Prime Minister Meles Zenawi at the age of 57.
Mr Meles died at a hospital in the Belgian capital, Brussels, late on Monday after a long illness.
His body has been flown back to the capital, Addis Ababa, and a period of national mourning has been announced.
State media reported that Deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn would take over until elections in 2015.
Mr Meles's death has sparked fears of a leadership vacuum which could lead to instability in Ethiopia.
Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga is among those who have expressed concern that Mr Meles's death could herald a period of instability for Ethiopia.
He told the BBC the situation in Ethiopia was "very fragile" and that he was unsure whether the country was "sufficiently prepared for his succession".
"One would hope they could contain the various factions within the government so that the transition is smooth," he said.
Mr Meles's death was celebrated by the al-Shabab Islamist militant group in Somalia - where he twice sent troops to fight. They told Reuters that Ethiopia was "sure to collapse".
But at a news conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopian government spokesman Bereket Simon said that Mr Hailemariam had been appointed acting prime minister.
"There will be no election as the constitutional procedure allows us to continue with the deputy prime minister acting as prime minister for now," he said.
"He will take over in parliament and then he will kick off as a full-fledged prime minister."
Mr Bereket said the parliament, which is currently in recess, would reconvene as soon as possible to start the process and swear in Mr Hailemariam.
Mr Meles had not been seen in public for weeks and speculation about his health mounted when he missed a summit in Addis Ababa last month
The Council of Ministers announced his death on state TV on Tuesday.
The statement said Mr Meles had been receiving medical treatment abroad for the past two months and that his health was improving. But he developed a "sudden infection" on Sunday and despite emergency treatment, died at 23:40 on Monday.
Foreign ministry spokesman Dina Mufti said Mr Meles had been "the greatest leader that Ethiopia has witnessed" and that the country was in shock.
But he said it was now time to work together and "bypass this challenge".
There would be no change in foreign or domestic policy, he said.
"The policies will stay the course and be implemented as usual and things will continue."
Mr Meles took power as the leader of rebels that ousted communist leader Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Mr Meles would be remembered "for his exceptional leadership and advocacy on African issues within and outside the continent" and for overseeing his country's economic development.
Mr Ban also praised Mr Meles's "active commitment to working with the United Nations on numerous global peace and development challenges".
But critics say economic development came at the cost of respect for human rights.
"He was always talking about democracy, civil rights, adherence to [the] constitution and the like. But it was only a lip service," one rights critic, Commander Assefa Seifu, told the BBC.
Under Mr Meles, Ethiopia became a staunch US ally, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in aid over the years, and hosting the US military drones that patrol East Africa.
He won accolades from the West for sending troops to battle Islamist militants in Somalia, but concern had been growing about the lack of democracy and human rights in Ethiopia.
At least 200 people died in the violence that followed the 2005 elections, and many journalists and politicians have been locked up.
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6fade9fd4c2f0f5523f1317736072e17 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19366101 | African Union urges Gambia to stop prisoner executions | African Union urges Gambia to stop prisoner executions
The African Union has asked The Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh to renounce plans to execute all death row prisoners next month.
Mr Jammeh made the comment during a speech he gave to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid.
A Gambian pressure group says many of the 47 death row inmates are political prisoners or have faced unfair trials.
According to Amnesty International, no executions have been carried out in The Gambia for 27 years.
The death penalty was abolished when former President Dawda Jawara was in power but reinstated in 1995 shortly after Mr Jammeh seized power in a military coup.
"By the middle of next month, all the death sentences would have been carried out to the letter; there is no way my government will allow 99% of the population to be held to ransom by criminals," President Jammeh said in an speech on Sunday, which was broadcast on national television the next day.
In response, Benin's President Thomas Boni Yayi, who is the current chair of the African Union, sent his foreign minister to The Gambia.
"After having learned of the imminent execution of a number of prisoners sentenced to death, President Yayi, who is very concerned, wished that President Yahya Jammeh not carry out such a decision," Beninois Foreign Minister Nassirou Bako Arifari told BBC Afrique.
The president's remarks have also caused much distress amongst death row inmates and their families, Civil Society Associations Gambia (Csag) and UK-based Amnesty International said in statements.
"Csag is particularly disturbed that on the day of Eid al-Fitr, when Muslims the world over seek forgiveness, extend messages of peace and love, show solidarity with one another and those in distressing conditions that President Jammeh chose once again to show his brutality and repressive nature by informing Muslim leaders that he would execute prisoners," the group said.
Amnesty International said death sentences in The Gambia were "known to be used as a tool against the political opposition".
It added: "Furthermore, international standards on fair trials, including presumption of innocence, access to lawyers and exclusion of any evidence obtained as a result of torture, are often not respected."
Mr Jammeh's human rights record has often been criticised by international organisations, with particular concerns over press freedom.
Last year, after winning a fourth term in office in widely criticised polls he told the BBC that his critics could "go to hell" because he feared "only Allah".
The tiny West African state is a popular tourist destination.
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b051ba28605b6910c328c5094856f92b | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19371622 | Nine executed in Gambia, says Amnesty International | Nine executed in Gambia, says Amnesty International
Amnesty International says it has received "credible reports" that Gambia executed nine death row prisoners on Thursday.
"More persons are under threat of imminent executions in the coming days," Amnesty International said.
President Yahya Jammeh had vowed to kill all 47 death row inmates by next month, in a national speech to mark the Muslim festival of Eid.
The last official execution in Gambia took place in 1985.
The African Union called on Mr Jammeh to renounce his plans after he made the announcement on Sunday.
But according to Amnesty International, nine people, including one woman, were removed from their prison cells and executed on Thursday night.
Three of those reportedly executed had been sentenced for treason, the group said in a statement.
"The decision of the Gambian President Yahya Jammeh to execute nine prisoners after more than a quarter of a century without execution would be a giant leap backwards," said Paule Rigaud, Amnesty International's deputy director for the Africa region.
She added that many of the death row inmates were political prisoners or have faced unfair trials.
A Gambian security source told AFP news agency that all 47 death row prisoners had been "transferred to one place".
Referring to President Jammeh, the source said: "The man is determined to execute the prisoners and he will do so."
The death penalty was abolished when former President Dawda Jawara was in power but reinstated in 1995 shortly after Mr Jammeh seized power in a military coup.
"By the middle of next month, all the death sentences would have been carried out to the letter; there is no way my government will allow 99% of the population to be held to ransom by criminals," President Jammeh said in an speech on Sunday, which was broadcast on national television the next day.
In response, Benin's President Thomas Boni Yayi, who is the current chair of the African Union, sent his foreign minister to Gambia.
"After having learned of the imminent execution of a number of prisoners sentenced to death, President Yayi, who is very concerned, wished that President Yahya Jammeh not carry out such a decision," Beninois Foreign Minister Nassirou Bako Arifari told BBC Afrique.
Mr Jammeh's human rights record has often been criticised by international organisations, with particular concerns over press freedom.
Last year, after winning a fourth term in office in widely criticised polls he told the BBC that his critics could "go to hell" because he feared "only Allah".
The tiny West African state is a popular tourist destination.
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98f0744fccd6ef2320ce5a956400634d | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19390888 | 'Al-Shabab supporter' Aboud Rogo Mohammed killed in Kenya | 'Al-Shabab supporter' Aboud Rogo Mohammed killed in Kenya
A Kenyan radical Islamist cleric has been killed in a drive-by shooting in the city of Mombasa.
Aboud Rogo Mohammed was on US and UN sanction lists for allegedly supporting Somalia's al-Shabab militants.
According to a UN report, he had helped al-Shabab obtain funding and new recruits. He was also facing charges of plotting attacks in Mombasa.
Following the killing, protests have erupted in Mombasa in which one person was killed and churches were attacked.
The highway from Mombasa to the tourist centre of Malindi was closed by tyre-burning protesters, before they were dispersed by police who fired tear gas.
Many businesses were closed, while streets normally full of shoppers and tourists were empty, reports Reuters news agency.
Some of the rioters said the authorities were behind the shooting.
Mr Rogo has already been buried.
"A car behind us aimed at my husband, they shot him on the right side," his widow Haniya Said, who was also shot, told the AFP news agency.
"He died as we rushed him to hospital," she said, before she and her children were themselves taken to the hospital.
Aboud Rogo Mohammed was placed on a US sanctions list in July for "engaging in acts that directly or indirectly threaten the peace, security or stability of Somalia".
The UN Security Council imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on him in July, saying he had provided "financial, material, logistical or technical support to al-Shabab".
It accused him of being the "main ideological leader" of Kenya's al-Hijra group, also known as the Muslim Youth Centre, which is viewed as a close ally of al-Shabab.
He had "used the extremist group as a pathway for radicalisation and recruitment of principally Swahili-speaking Africans for carrying out violent militant activity in Somalia," the UN added.
In 2005, Mr Rogo was cleared on murder charges over the 2002 attack on a hotel where Israeli tourists were staying, which killed 12 people.
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372f7127f277e533e4de19c5682772f1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19634074 | Thousands flee as Somali forces advance on Kismayo | Thousands flee as Somali forces advance on Kismayo
Somali government forces are advancing on Kismayo, the key stronghold of Islamist group al-Shabab, as thousands of residents flee an expected assault.
A Somali government army general told the BBC that his forces were intending to take the port, but did not say when.
The United Nations refugee agency has reported a sudden spike in the number of civilians fleeing Kismayo from a few dozen to more than 1,000 a day.
Those who can afford it are hiring buses and trucks to leave the city.
Kismayo is the militants' main base in its fight against the Somali government whose troops have been slowly converging on the town with African Union (AU) soldiers - de-mining the road along the way.
The UN says residents there fear some sort of military activity in or around the port.
Locals told the BBC Somali Service that hundreds of militants have also been leaving Kismayo in armed pick-up trucks, taking heavy equipment with them. Radio Andalus, the mouthpiece of al-Shabab in the city, has reportedly stopped broadcasting.
But al-Shabab denies the reports, saying they have fought off AU forces.
Somali army Gen Ismail Sahareed, who said he was speaking from a position about 60km (37 miles) outside Kismayo, told the BBC Somali Service that al-Shabab had left the port and that his troops were on the way there.
"In the last battles [on Saturday and Monday] we defeated al-Shabab's defence forces and they ran away and we are chasing their remnants."
The general said the governor of Kismayo had been wounded in the fighting.
He appealed for Kismayo residents to be calm and promised the Somali government army would bring all areas in the region under government control in the near future.
He warned that al-Shabab had left behind guns, distributed amongst the population to create insecurity once government troops arrive there. He appealed to residents not to use them, saying that his troops would collect them.
However, Muhammad Usman Arus, a spokesman for the al-Qaeda-affiliated group, told the BBC that al-Shabab had killed around 100 Kenyan and Somali troops and pushed them back from Kismayo.
"We are in Kismayo - this is a propaganda war. The Kenyan and Somali forces have already broken off and gone back to their positions," he said.
Analysts say that losing their strategic stronghold would be a major blow to al-Shabab. Located in the south of Somalia, near the border with Kenya, the port exports charcoal generating millions of dollars to fund the militants' fight against the government.
BBC international development correspondent Mark Doyle says if Somali government forces do move on Kismayo it will be largely thanks to their allies in the AU force - the Kenyans operating around Kismayo and Ugandan troops operating to the north of the city.
The United States supports the AU forces officially with logistics but also sometimes also with drone strikes.
A navy spokesman in Washington confirmed there is a US warship off the coast of Kismayo but said it was on routine operations.
The spokesman said he had no information about whether the ship intended to dock in Kismayo or not.
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5f79ccae9525805a5d5d7afcc812c988 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19660607 | South Africa's Marikana fallout: Winners and losers | South Africa's Marikana fallout: Winners and losers
This may not be the end of South Africa's industrial unrest, but as workers at the Marikana platinum mine return to work it seems like a good opportunity to rate the winners and losers so far.
Plenty of people - and not just generalisation-loving journalists - have taken a look at the anarchy at Marikana and seen it as further proof that South Africa is on a downwards slide to Zimbabwe circa 2008.
I do not buy the doomsday scenario.
But as the commentator and businessman Moeletsi Mbeki put it to me: "South Africa is a powder keg. Serious foreign investment stopped some time ago."
Brand South Africa - at least in some quarters - has just taken a big hit.
"Violence works," said one jubilant worker to me at Marikana on Wednesday.
"When we just talk, we get only peanuts."
The miners may richly deserve their pay rise, but as the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) Secretary General Frans Baleni put it: "The normal bargaining processes have been compromised.
"It does suggest that unprotected action, an element of anarchy, can be easily rewarded."
A provocative precedent has been set.
It was heartening to see the South African Council of Churches step into the centre of the Marikana crisis, with Bishop Jo Seoka taking a lead role in mediation efforts.
Hopefully it will not need to become a pattern in future wage negotiations, but with trust in the unions, the government and the police taking a big hit, the country's energetic but often marginalised activists and community structures have an important role to play.
Former African National Congress (ANC) Youth League leader Julius Malema has had a good month.
He has used the unrest partly to wage a cynical, self-serving campaign against his former mentor, President Jacob Zuma, but also to highlight the yawning gap between South Africa's limousine and champagne elites and the increasingly voiceless masses.
You may condemn Mr Malema's opportunism, and question his radical political prescriptions, but he has become an electrifying and eloquent performer.
Locked into a formal alliance with the ruling ANC, South Africa's unions were always likely to face a crisis of credibility at some point.
That moment may have come.
For years the unions were criticised in some quarters for protecting their own workers at the expense of the country's vast army of jobless.
But now even those workers are turning on their bosses - accusing them of being too close to capital, and government.
"Even wearing an NUM [National Union of Mineworkers] T-shirt you can be killed," a striking miner told me at Marikana after a shop steward had been murdered.
Will the unions change their ways?
If the president fails to win a second term in office, then Marikana will certainly be one of the reasons why.
His distant, tone-deaf performance in the early stages of the strike has been widely criticised.
But he remains a shrewd political operator and cannot be written off yet.
Lonmin's profit margins have just taken a big hit.
Others may follow.
But if South Africa remains a fractious, frustrating place to do business, then the companies - local and foreign - also need to do a much better job of explaining their side of the argument.
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6bfc5d5d12eefe1abed11e9852b453d8 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19672999 | South Africa gold miners on strike at Anglo | South Africa gold miners on strike at Anglo
Workers at a South African gold mine have begun a wildcat strike - the latest labour unrest in the country's vital mining industry.
The strikers at the Kopanang mine, which employs 5,000 staff, reportedly want their pay to more than double to 12,500 rand ($1,513; £935) a month.
The strike comes a day after miners at the Marikana platinum complex returned to work after reaching a pay deal.
An inquiry into the deaths of 46 people in Marikana will start on 1 October.
Justice Minister Jeff Radebe said that the families of the 34 people shot dead by police would be encouraged to attend and that it would be given four months to complete its work.
South Africa is one of the world's biggest producers of precious metals.
It holds 80% of the world's known platinum reserves and is the fourth largest gold exporter.
Some 15,000 workers employed by Gold Fields are already on strike.
About 15% of South Africa's gold production is affected by the industrial unrest, a South African mining analyst from Mineweb told the BBC.
The latest industrial action began overnight at the Kopanang mine, south-west of Johannesburg.
"The night shift embarked on an unprotected strike... and the morning shift didn't go down either," said Alan Fine, a spokesman for the AngloGold Ashanti-owned mine.
It is believed that the mine accounts for about 20% of the company's production in South Africa.
The strikers' demands mirror those of the Marikana employees, who in the end settled for a much lower pay rise of 11-22% with their Lonmin owner.
South African Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus has expressed concern that the Marikana agreement could set a precedent for future wage demands in the mining sector, leading the inflation rate to rise from its current 5%.
Soldiers were deployed to the Marikana area over the weekend, after the government vowed to clamp down after nearly six weeks of unrest.
The shooting of the 34 miners was the most deadly police action since the end of white minority rule in 1994 and sparked a national outcry.
Ten people, including two police officers, had previously died during the protests.
Two more people have since died.
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cce30f427e35cfcb5fb19ba7620d9a62 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19807964 | Nigeria police deny Mubi student killings arrests | Nigeria police deny Mubi student killings arrests
Nigerian police have denied that there have been arrests in connection with the killing of at least 26 people at a college hostel in Mubi.
But police spokesman Mohammed Ibrahim told the BBC many officers had been deployed to the north-eastern town in the search for the attackers.
Most victims were students called out by name by the gunmen who went from door-to-door, police said.
It is not clear who was behind the attack.
Some suspect the Boko Haram militant group, while police sources are linking it to a student union election, which was contested on sectarian lines.
BBC Hausa service editor Mansur Liman says the newly elected leader of the student union at the Federal Polytechnic Mubi was among those reported to have been killed.
Rivalry between different groups of students, sometimes influenced by national politics, religion and ethnicity, is not a new phenomenon in Nigeria's higher educational institutions; however, this would be the first time it has reached such a level of violence, he says.
Leadership positions on campuses can be a stepping stone for a future career in national politics, which many in Nigeria see as a licence to get rich quickly, he adds.
However, the polytechnic's deputy registrar Shuaib Aroke has denied that the killings were linked to students politics.
"It is a fallacy," he told the AFP news agency. "We are united here at polytechnic."
The town had already been under an extensive curfew, in force between 15:00 and 06:00, after a series of arrests of people with suspected links to Boko Haram last week. That curfew is continuing.
The college has been closed and some students have fled the town.
Nigeria's Senate on Wednesday condemned "in strongest terms the killing of innocent students" and urged the federal government to move quickly to apprehend the perpetrators.
An investigation is under way. Mubi is blanketed with police, who have been going house-to-house in their hunt for the attackers.
"We have many policemen and other security officials in Mubi, and since we are still investigating and searching for the suspects, by God's grace, we'll get them," Mr Ibrahim told the BBC Hausa service.
Earlier, he was reported to have said that many suspects had been detained in connection with the killings, but he denied telling journalists this.
There have also been a series of recent military sweeps across the town in the fight against Boko Haram.
The BBC's East Africa correspondent Will Ross says the operation is Mubi is being carried out by the Joint Task Force, which is supposed to be a combination of soldiers and police.
However it is clear the soldiers take the lead in these operations and the police sometimes do not have the latest information on these operations by the JTF, our correspondent says.
Reports of the Mubi attack suggest men in military uniform entered a hall of residence outside the main campus shortly before midnight on Monday and gathered the students outside their rooms. After they were killed, their bodies were left in lines outside the buildings.
Accounts of the scale of the attack vary. A local resident and a school official have been quoted as saying at least 40 people were killed - the official reportedly saying only 25 bodies were taken to the morgue because relatives took away the bodies of the other 15.
Mr Ibrahim said the police now had a figure of 26, as one person died later of their wounds.
Some of the dead in Mubi were Muslim while others were Christian. Two security guards and an elderly resident were among the victims, the police said.
A former president of the National Association of Nigerian Students, Ken Henshaw, told the BBC that the killings were "simply shocking".
But he added: "It seems to make a lot of sense that it could have been an outcome of the elections that were held the previous day.
"You may want to know that the rector of the polytechnic is from south Nigeria and he's a Christian and the fact that he is rector had caused some tensions in the institution already. And, surprisingly, the person who won the election is a Christian.
"So I think that that was a breaking-point and the whole thing just flipped over [into violence]."
Boko Haram has not yet commented on the attack. It is fighting to establish Islamic law in Nigeria and has killed more than 1,000 people in numerous attacks across northern and central areas this year.
Adamawa state has a mixed Muslim and Christian population and borders Borno state, where Boko Haram came to prominence in 2009, staging an uprising in the capital Maiduguri.
Nigeria's population is roughly evenly divided between a largely Muslim north and a mainly Christian south.
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2bb18da03e181ceb3712cd93439fbd68 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19974443 | Kenya policemen seriously injured in grenade attack | Kenya policemen seriously injured in grenade attack
At least 10 Kenyan policemen have been seriously injured in a grenade attack.
The officers were searching a house in Coast state near Mombasa, where they found weapons including an AK-47 rifle and two grenades.
A police spokesperson said Somalia-based Islamists al-Shabab may have been behind the incident.
Kenya has been hit by a series of grenade and gun attacks since it sent troops into Somalia to help fight the al-Qaeda-linked group last year.
Aggrey Adoli, the head of police for Coast province, told reporters that three suspects were also killed in the exchange of fire following the attack.
Suspected al-Shabab supporters have carried out a number of attacks over the past year in the Coast region, a popular tourist destination.
Kenyan troops have been fighting against the group alongside their Somali counterparts under the banner of African Union forces since October 2011.
At the end of last month they took al-Shabab's last Somali stronghold, the strategic port city of Kismayu.
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dda055001b589157ba4b7708a364313a | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20003253 | Somalia: 'Al-Shabab weapons seized in Puntland' | Somalia: 'Al-Shabab weapons seized in Puntland'
A large consignment of arms destined for suspected Islamist militants in north-eastern Somalia has been seized, a regional governor has told the BBC.
Abdisamad Gallan said a boat said to have come from Yemen delivered sealed sacks full of land mines and artillery.
Correspondents say this is one of the biggest seizures of al-Shabab weapons.
The discovery was made after a tip-off from residents in Qandala, a coastal town in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, Mr Gallan said.
The al-Shabab group says it wants to strengthen its presence in Puntland.
The al-Qaeda-aligned group once dominated all of central and southern Somalia, but has now lost all the major towns it once controlled, although it still occupies many rural areas.
Somalia descended into a patchwork of territories controlled by rival warlords and clans after the overthrow of President Siad Barre in 1991.
Puntland became autonomous in 1998 and has remained mainly free of the Islamists' influence, but is known for its pirate bases.
Mr Gallan, the governor of Puntland's Bari province, said it was believed that the boat had travelled from Yemen.
The crew escaped on their boat before they could be questioned, but Qandala residents said they were foreigners, he told the BBC's Somali service.
Earlier this week, an al-Shabab website, Amiirnuur, said the militants were expanding their activities into Puntland and intended to show its residents the true path of Islam.
The group follows the Saudi-inspired Wahhabi version of Islam, while most Somalis are Sufis.
The website said Sheikh Abdur Kadir Mumim, an al-Shabab leader in Puntland, wanted to oust the region's President Abdirahman Farole, who he accused of being against Islam as he had invited Nato officers into the region "to fight terrorists".
Earlier this year, a UN report noted that al-Shabab was expanding operations further north, with an armed group in the region joining the Islamists.
The African Union (AU) troops fighting alongside Somali government army have been leading the fight against al-Shabab in southern Somalia.
The group was driven from the capital, Mogadishu, more than a year ago - and although the Islamists still launch occasional suicide attacks - correspondents say the city is experiencing a renaissance, with businesses opening and buildings being reconstructed.
There has also been progress on the political front with the election by MPs of a new president last month.
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6d59453acf19fb7b968f80bf3e7379dd | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20178992 | Zuma says South Africa needs traditional courts | Zuma says South Africa needs traditional courts
South African President Jacob Zuma has said some legal issues in the country are better resolved by traditional justice.
"Let us solve African problems the African way, not the white man's way," Mr Zuma told traditional leaders.
The South African parliament is considering a bill that would give local chiefs wide-ranging legal powers.
But Mr Zuma said there were flaws in the bill as currently drafted which need to be corrected.
Traditional courts have always existed in South Africa, as in much of Africa.
But the president wants a single legal system for these courts unlike during apartheid when each rural "homeland" had its own system.
The Traditional Courts Bill would allow local chiefs to act as judge, prosecutor and mediator, with no legal representation and no right of appeal.
It has been widely criticised for being unconstitutional, especially by women's groups, which argue it would take South Africa "back to the dark ages".
But Mr Zuma, speaking in parliament at the opening of the
National House of Traditional Leaders
, said the bill would allow greater access to justice for many of the some 18 million South Africans who live in areas overseen by traditional chiefs.
"Traditional communities of South Africa find the traditional justice system more accessible and flexible in resolving their disputes," he said.
"Our view is that the nature and the value system of traditional courts of promoting social cohesion and reconciliation must be recognised and strengthened."
Mr Zuma indicated that his government would seek to introduce greater checks on the legislation to prevent abuse of the traditional system.
The minister for women, Lulu Xingwana, has proposed an opt-out clause where plaintiffs or defendants can choose to go to a magistrate's court.
"In cases of eviction or domestic violence, traditional courts are not equipped or have the necessary expertise to handle these cases," she has argued.
In 2001, Rwanda decided to use its traditional courts, usually used to rule on minor issues, to speed up the legal process after the 1994 genocide.
Hearings at the so-called gacaca courts were deemed necessary because of the huge numbers of prosecutions and the inability of a shattered legal system to process the tens of thousands of detained prisoners.
The courts have been praised by some for delivering justice and reconciliation but have also been criticised for the lack of legal representation and having no trained judges.
A
1998 report
by the Penal Reform International aid agency concluded that informal and traditional modes of settling disputes were widespread throughout Africa.
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a27f0a85329c7adefac6714f07ffe388 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20187369 | Uganda to withdraw troops from Somalia, says Mukasa | Uganda to withdraw troops from Somalia, says Mukasa
Uganda will withdraw its forces from UN-backed international missions, Security Minister Muruli Mukasa says, escalating a long-running row.
Mr Mukasa said the government had sent an official to New York to inform the UN of this decision.
Operations in Somalia, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo will be affected.
The UN infuriated Kampala when it published an experts' report accusing Uganda of arming Congolese rebels.
Mr Mukasa told a news conference: "If our efforts are going to be misinterpreted and we are going to be maligned, we want to be in a good relationship with our neighbours.
"Let's stop all these initiatives. We will concentrate on ourselves. Whoever wants to cause us trouble, they will find us at our home."
Uganda provides the largest contingent to the UN-backed African Union mission in Somalia (Amisom).
The Amisom force has helped the Somali government gain ground against Islamist militias.
Analysts say a rapid withdrawal of Ugandan troops could threaten those gains.
Ugandan troops are deployed in smaller numbers to an international mission to CAR and DR Congo to hunt down the remaining elements of the Lord's Resistance Army and its leader, Joseph Kony.
The LRA killed thousands of people and abducted thousands more during a long insurgency that has seen it fight in several countries.
The remarks from the security minister echo a statement made in the Ugandan parliament on Thursday by Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi.
The BBC's Catherine Byaruhanga in Kampala says while both the prime minister and the security minister have said the decision is irreversible, there has been no official government word on the issue.
The foreign and defence ministries, when contacted by the BBC, said no statements were available.
A report by a UN panel of experts last month said Rwanda and Uganda were both supplying weapons to the M23 rebels in the DR Congo. Both countries denied the claims.
The rebels' insurrection has forced some 500,000 from their homes since April.
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eb95803556bf9775efa33bef69405a62 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20305537 | Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields 'plundered' | Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields 'plundered'
At least $2bn (£1.25bn) worth of diamonds has been stolen from Zimbabwe, campaign group Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) has alleged.
It was "the biggest plunder of diamonds since Cecil Rhodes", it said, referring to a British colonial mining magnate.
The "theft" at the Marange fields had enriched Zimbabwean officials, international gem dealers and criminals, the PAC report said.
A Zimbabwean mining official dismissed the allegation as "totally false".
The report,
Reap What You Sow: Greed and Corruption in Zimbabwe's Marange Diamond Fields
, was released by the Ottawa-based group to coincide with the Zimbabwean government's conference on diamond trade at the resort town of Victoria Falls.
President Robert Mugabe, in his address to delegates, said the government was committed to observing "international laws on diamond mining, storage and trading", AP news agency reports.
The industry's global watchdog body, the Kimberley Process, lifted a ban on Zimbabwean diamond sales in 2011, with the backing of the US and European Union.
The ban was imposed in 2009 following reports that Zimbabwean military officials were benefiting from the diamond trade and there had been killings and human rights abuses at the Marange fields.
The PAC said the scale of "illegality" at the fields was "mind-blowing".
"Conservative estimates place the theft of Marange goods at almost $2bn since 2008," it added.
In July, Zimbabwean Finance Minister Tendai Biti said that $600m in diamond revenues was expected this year, but only $46m had materialised.
Mr Biti is a member of the Movement of Democratic Change (MDC), which is in a fractious coalition with Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.
The two parties formed a power-sharing government in 2009, following elections marred by violence.
The mining industry and security portfolios are controlled by Zanu-PF.
The head of of the state-run Zimbabwe Mining Development Company, Goodwills Masimirembwa, told AP that the PAC's allegations were "totally false".
"No diamonds have ever gone missing," Mr Masimirembwa is quoted as saying.
"When we are selling our diamonds, all stakeholders - the police, revenue board and the country's mineral marketing body - come together. So, are they saying all these institutions are in collusion?"
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1c357f72e4862d54233b59dc85ded25e | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20819462 | Kenya to repatriate Somali refugees | Kenya to repatriate Somali refugees
More than 500,000 Somali refugees in Kenya are to be given the opportunity to return home after the UN refugee agency signed a tripartite agreement with the two countries' governments.
Under the agreement, the Somalis will be repatriated voluntarily over the next three years.
The Somalis have sought refuge in Kenya from war and poverty.
Two of the camps they live in, Dadaab and Kakuma, are now so large they are more like towns, correspondents say.
There is also a suburb of the capital, Nairobi - Eastleigh - that is known as "Little Mogadishu" because so many Somalis live there.
The refugees fled Somalia after the collapse of the central government in 1991.
Many of them were born in camps and have never set foot inside their home country.
The two governments and the UN hope to introduce a reintegration programme to help the refugees start new lives in Somalia and take part in the reconstruction of the country.
Somalia's Deputy Prime Minister Fowsia Yusuf Adam said her country was preparing for the safe return of its refugees.
"Terrorism is still a major threat to our region. The federal republic of Somalia is committed to creating conditions that will allow for the safe and dignified voluntary repatriation of the Somali refugees in Kenya and other neighbouring countries."
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said refugees would decide whether they wanted to return.
"No-one wants to see refugees go home and have to flee again, or become displaced inside Somalia," said Alessandra Morelli, the UNHCR representative for Somalia.
Somalia's ambassador to Kenya, Mohammed Ali Nur, told the BBC the agreement would be implemented over three years.
It gave refugees the chance to rebuild their lives, he said.
"They can't be begging... for food all their lives," he told the BBC's Newsday programme.
The BBC World Service's Africa editor, Richard Hamilton, says the main problem with the agreement is that most of the refugees know that Somalia is still not safe and probably would not want to return.
Our correspondent says that, while Kenya has been praised for offering help to a neighbour in need, the country is becoming disgruntled with having to bear the burden of the refugee population.
Kenya's Deputy President William Ruto says refugees have become a shield for those who pose a security threat to Kenya.
Kenya has been concerned about further threats of terrorism following the attack by suspected Somali militants on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi in September.
The Somali Islamist al-Shabab group - which is linked to al-Qaeda - said it was behind the attack.
It said it was taking revenge after Kenya sent troops into Somalia to help the UN-backed government seize territory from militants.
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ff05453382771675fe16270d22c06eb1 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21018429 | African elephant poaching threatens wildlife future | African elephant poaching threatens wildlife future
Three elephant corpses lay piled on top of one another under the scorching Kenyan sun.
In their terror, the elephants must have sought safety in numbers - in vain: a thick trail of blackened blood traced their final moments.
In December, nine elephants were killed outside the Tsavo National Park, in south-eastern Kenya. This month, a family of 12 was gunned down in the same area.
In both cases, the elephants' faces had been hacked off to remove the tusks. The rest was left to the maggots and the flies.
"That is a big number for one single incident," said Samuel Takore of the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS). "We have not had such an incident in recent years, I think dating back to before I joined the service."
Mr Takore joined in the 1980s, and his observations corroborate a wider pattern: across Africa, elephant poaching is now at its highest for 20 years.
During the 1980s, more than half of Africa's elephants are estimated to have been wiped out, mostly by poachers hunting for ivory.
But in January 1990, countries around the world signed up to an international ban on the trade in ivory. Global demand dwindled in the face of a worldwide public awareness campaign.
Elephant populations began to swell again.
But in recent years, those advances have been reversed.
An estimated 25,000 elephants were killed in 2011. The figures for 2012 are still being collated, but they will almost certainly be higher still.
Campaigners are pointing the finger of blame at China.
"China is the main buyer of ivory in the world," said Dr Esmond Martin, a conservationist and researcher who has spent decades tracking the movement of illegal ivory around the world.
He has recently returned from Nigeria, where he conducted a visual survey of ivory on sale in the city of Lagos. His findings are startling.
Dr Martin and his colleagues counted more than 14,000 items of worked and raw ivory in one location, the Lekki Market in Lagos.
The last survey, conducted at the same market in 2002, counted about 4,000 items, representing a three-fold increase in a decade.
According to the findings of the investigation, which has been shared exclusively with the BBC, Nigeria is at the centre of a booming trade in illegal African ivory.
In 2011, the Nigerian government introduced strict legislation to clamp down on the ivory trade, making it illegal to display, advertise, buy or sell ivory.
And yet, says Dr Martin, Lagos has now become the largest retail market for illegal ivory in Africa.
"There's ivory moving all the way from East Africa, from Kenya into Nigera," he said. "Nigerians are exporting tusks to China. Neighbouring countries are exporting a lot of worked ivory items (to Nigeria).
"So it's a major entrepot for everything from tusks coming in, tusks going out, worked ivory going in, worked ivory going out, worked ivory being made."
The BBC visited the Lekki Market in Lagos. Wearing a hidden camera, a reporter from the BBC's Chinese Service was immediately approached.
Speaking Mandarin Chinese, a Nigerian trader offered "xiang ya" - "ivory". There were piles of carved items for sale, ivory bangles, combs, chopsticks, and strings of beads.
Another trader proffered two whole tusks, on sale at just over $400 per kilo. When asked how much raw ivory he could provide, he offered to supply 100kg or more.
Increasing prosperity in China, coupled with a large influx of Chinese workers and investors across Africa, has sent demand for ivory soaring.
Kenya runs one of the most effective anti-poaching efforts in Africa.
As well as the KWS (the government-run wildlife protection service) local communities and private conservancies are providing their own armed rangers.
The Northern Rangelands Trust is such an organisation. It runs a "Rapid Response Unit" of about a dozen armed men, who camp out in the thorny scrubland of northern Kenya following herds of elephants and tracking poachers.
The unit is essentially a state-sanctioned paramilitary force. The commander, Jackson Loldikir, and his men wear camouflage fatigues and are armed with Kalashnikov rifles.
Theirs is a dangerous job. While out on patrol with the BBC, the group was charged by a herd of nervous elephants.
A ranger had to fire a warning shot in the air to avoid being trampled.
Mr Loldikir says arresting poachers is a waste of time. Prosecutions are rare and the perpetrator is likely to get off with a small fine.
And so Mr Loldikir and his men say they are forced to take more drastic measures.
"When we meet a poacher, we just kill," he said. "It's the only way to protect the animals, just to kill the poacher."
Injuries, even deaths, are not uncommon, on both sides.
"In May, we heard a shot. We met five poachers. They had killed an elephant. So we shot them. We killed one and we recovered two guns. And one of our scouts was also injured."
But the poachers seem undeterred. Conservationists in Kenya are warning that at the current rate, elephants could soon disappear from the wild altogether.
"If the price continues to rise as it is and the killing of elephants continues, within 15 years there will be no free-ranging elephant in northern Kenya, I'm quite sure," said Ian Craig, who runs the Northern Rangeland Trust.
"Wherever there are unprotected elephant and there are firearms, people are going to kill them. They're just worth too much money."
And what applies to Kenya applies also to the rest of Africa.
In a continent where guns are plentiful and poverty is widespread, the rewards of poaching simply outweigh the risks.
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5726715d0df5b5be1dbecab2cf2d6794 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21095061 | Algeria siege: Hostage nations concerned over situation | Algeria siege: Hostage nations concerned over situation
Nations with hostages being held by militants at an Algerian gas plant have expressed concern at the ongoing siege.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the situation as "extremely difficult and dangerous".
While state media say hundreds of hostages have been freed at the remote In Amenas desert gas facility, about 30 foreigners are still unaccounted for.
State-run APS news agency says 12 Algerian and foreign workers have died since rescue efforts began on Thursday.
The operation to free hostages has now been going on for more than 36 hours, with few details being released by the Algerian authorities.
Norwegian firm Statoil announced on Saturday that two of its workers had been "brought to safety", leaving six more unaccounted for. It was not made clear how the pair had escaped the siege.
APS said that 573 Algerians and "around 100" of 132 foreign workers had been freed, and 18 militants had been killed.
The remaining militants - armed with missiles, rocket launchers, grenades, machine guns and assault rifles - are still holed up in a refinery at the site, which was surrounded by Algerian special forces, APS said.
About 10 Britons are thought to be still held.
The UN Security Council condemned the "heinous" hostage-taking, saying the incident underlined the need to bring its perpetrators, organisers and financiers to justice.
Mrs Clinton said Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal had told her on Friday that the "operation was still ongoing, that the situation remained fluid, that the hostages remain in danger in a number of instances".
She said she had urged the "utmost care" be taken in the protection of both Algerian and expatriate foreign hostages.
US officials earlier confirmed that there were still Americans being held at the site and re-iterated that the "United States does not negotiate with terrorists".
US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told the BBC that no option was off the table when it came to ensuring that al-Qaeda and its associates did not establish a base in North Africa.
The US state department, meanwhile, confirmed an American hostage, Frederick Buttaccio, had died in the incident.
Two others, a Briton and an Algerian, reportedly died on Wednesday when the militants ambushed two buses that were taking foreign workers at the facility to the local airport.
After the attack on the buses, at 0500 local time on Wednesday, the militants drove to the installation and took Algerian and foreign workers hostage in the living area and the main gas facility at the complex.
At noon on Thursday, Algerian forces attacked as the militants tried to move some of their captives from the facility.
The current situation is unclear, but reports on Friday said security forces were still searching for the hostage-takers at the complex.
The installation had been put out of action to avoid the risk of an explosion, the state news agency reported.
Officials from several countries, including Japan, Norway, Ireland, the US and Austria have confirmed some of their nationals managed to escape.
One French citizen, Yann Desjeux, was killed in the military operation, said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament
he had been told by Mr Sellal that it was a large site and troops were "still pursuing terrorists and possibly some of the hostages".
Algerian officials said the militants were operating under orders from Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who was a senior AQIM commander until late last year.
The Mauritanian ANI agency - which has received several messages from the militants - quoted sources from Belmokhtar's group as saying they wanted to exchange their American captives for two high-profile detainees in American jails.
They are the Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York, and Pakistani scientist Aafia Siddiqui, who was convicted in 2010 of attempting to kill US military personnel.
An earlier statement purporting to come from the kidnappers says the raid was carried out in retaliation for the French intervention against Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), in neighbouring Mali.
The In Amenas gas field is operated by the Algerian state oil company, Sonatrach, along with the British oil company BP and Norway's Statoil.
It is situated at Tigantourine, about 40km (25 miles) south-west of the town of In Amenas and 1,300km (800 miles) south-east of Algiers.
BP said
hundreds of workers from international oil companies had been evacuated from Algeria on Thursday and that many more would follow.
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af112b59d528969e143be6a470d2a0a8 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21234543 | Egypt opposition rejects Mohammed Morsi dialogue call | Egypt opposition rejects Mohammed Morsi dialogue call
Egypt's main opposition alliance has rejected Mohammed Morsi's call for national dialogue amid continuing protests against the president.
Mr Morsi had urged opposition leaders to attend a meeting following four days of deadly violence.
Dozens have died since Saturday, when a court sentenced 21 people to death over football riots in Port Said last year.
Protesters defied a night-time curfew imposed by the authorities in Port Said, Suez and Ismailia.
A temporary state of emergency has been declared in the three cities along the Suez canal, but thousands of protesters took to the streets in the first hours after nightfall.
In Suez, people marched towards the headquarters of the provincial government, while in Port Said one man was killed as groups attacked police stations, according to medical sources.
Security men and soldiers were also injured, Egyptian authorities said.
Earlier, state news agency Mena reported six deaths in Port Said during daylight hours on Monday, when funerals were held for three people killed on Sunday.
No curfew has been imposed in the capital Cairo, despite violence that continued on Monday with one man killed by gunfire near Tahrir Square.
State TV said a total of 590 people had been injured in violence across Egypt on Monday, most of them in Port Said.
Meanwhile the human rights group Amnesty International condemned the use of violence by Egyptian security forces dealing with protests citing "disturbing eyewitness accounts of excessive force... including instances of lethal force".
Mr Morsi's call for dialogue appeared to fall on deaf ears, both in the streets and among political opponents.
Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading member of the opposition National Salvation Front, told journalists that before it would attend any national dialogue, the president would have to appoint a national unity government and take steps to amend the disputed constitution.
"The dialogue to which the president invited us is to do with form and not content," Mr ElBaradei said.
"We support any dialogue if it has a clear agenda that can shepherd the nation to the shores of safety."
Former presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi, speaking at the same news conference, said: "We aspire to a dialogue, but there are no guarantees that this dialogue will be a success... while blood is being spilled."
Mr Morsi invited representatives from 11 political forces - Islamists, liberals and leftists - to come to the presidential palace for talks on Monday evening.
But the BBC's Yolande Knell in Cairo says it is unclear who, if anyone, accepted the invitation.
She says the president had been hoping that dialogue could restore national unity amid growing concern about the scale of the latest unrest.
But the opposition accuses Mr Morsi of being autocratic and driving through a new constitution that does not adequately protect freedom of expression or religion.
In response to the growing violence on the streets, Egypt's cabinet on Monday approved a draft law allowing the army to participate in policing and have the power of arrest. The bill was later passed by the Shura Council, the upper house of parliament.
The text of the bill says the army will "support the police in maintaining order and protecting vital installations until the end of parliamentary elections and whenever the National Defence Council [headed by Mr Morsi] requests it".
The latest violent protests began in Port Said on Saturday when a court sentenced 21 local people to death over riots that killed 74 people at a football match last February.
Supporters of the Port Said side al-Masry attacked fans from the visiting Cairo club al-Ahly.
Most of the victims died of concussion, cuts and suffocation as the pitch was invaded at the end of the match.
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255ae247da6e592c67a4b8f008602dc7 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21350451 | French-owned tanker seized off Ivory Coast freed | French-owned tanker seized off Ivory Coast freed
A French-owned ship seized by pirates off Ivory Coast on Sunday has been freed, the vessel's owner has said.
Sea Tankers said two of the 17 sailors on board the M/T Gascogne were receiving medical attention after being injured during the hijacking.
The diesel tanker was seized off Ivory Coast's port city of Abidjan with a crew that included Africans and Asians.
Pirate attacks off the West African coast have increased in recent years, either for ransom or fuel theft.
Last month, armed hijackers freed a tanker seized off Ivory Coast after escaping with fuel worth $5m (£3m), said its Nigerian-based owner, Brila Energy.
Sea Tankers did not say how the M/T Gascogne was freed or what the motive of the hijackers was.
But it said it wanted to thank naval forces and state authorities for helping to secure the vessel's release.
"Sea Tankers are very pleased all 17 seafarers are reported safe. However, sadly, two seafarers were injured during the incident but are [being] taken care off," it said, in a statement.
On Sunday, Ivorian officials said the crew included seven sailors from Togo, four from Benin, two from Ivory Coast, two from Senegal and one each from China and South Korea, AP news agency reports.
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2b7f28df077d33aa67a41f64a0647994 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21600195 | Kenya bus crash 'kills at least 35' near Mwingi town | Kenya bus crash 'kills at least 35' near Mwingi town
At least 35 people have been killed in a bus crash near Mwingi town in eastern Kenya, a traffic officer has said.
Most of the passengers worked in the capital, Nairobi, and were returning to their homes to vote in Monday's election, a survivor told the BBC.
Farah Aden Ali, who sustained minor injuries, said the bus over-turned after the driver lost control.
Many of Kenya's roads are in a bad state, and buses are poorly maintained, correspondents say.
Traffic officer Samuel Kimaru said at least 35 passengers died and another 50 were wounded in the overnight accident.
"The death toll may increase because there were serious injuries following the accident. Those who were injured are undergoing treatment in hospital," he is quoted as saying by Kenya's Standard newspaper.
Mr Aden Ali told the BBC Somali Service that rescue teams arrived only about four hours after the crash, causing many people trapped in the wreckage to die.
The bus was over-crowded with many passengers - who were going to the towns of Mandera and Garissa - standing, he said.
"The bus had problems with the gear from when it left Nairobi," Mr Aden Ali added.
He said he was asleep, but woke up shortly before the accident.
"The driver lost control. He tried to bring it back under control, but it rolled over and turned on its side," Mr Aden Ali said.
Traffic on Kenya's roads is usually high before an election, as city workers travel to their rural homes, where they are registered to vote.
Kenya will hold parliamentary and presidential elections on Monday.
The presidential poll is expected to be a close contest between Prime Minister Raila Odinga and one of his deputies, Uhuru Kenyatta, who is due to stand trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) later this year for allegedly orchestrating violence after the disputed 2007 election.
President Mwai Kibaki, who beat Mr Odinga in the 2007 election, is stepping down after two terms.
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0fb80d7467cb8dfe5d60eb811c5f38dc | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21835345 | Bosco Ntaganda: Wanted Congolese in US mission in Rwanda | Bosco Ntaganda: Wanted Congolese in US mission in Rwanda
Democratic Republic of Congo war crimes suspect Bosco Ntaganda has handed himself over to the US embassy in the Rwandan capital Kigali, the US says.
The state department said he had asked to be transferred to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Gen Ntaganda, known as "The Terminator", in 2006.
He denies charges of conscripting child soldiers, murder, ethnic persecution and rape.
Those charges relate to his time as the leader of a militia in the north-eastern DR Congo between 2002 and 2003.
Since then he has fought for other rebel groups in the region, as well as the Congolese army.
Most recently he was believed to be one of the leaders of the M23 rebel group, which is fighting government troops in the east of the country.
The United Nations believes the M23 group is backed by the government of neighbouring Rwanda, though Rwanda denies this.
On Sunday, the DR Congo government said Gen Ntaganda, who comes from the Tutsi ethnic group, had fled to Rwanda after he and some of his followers were apparently defeated by a rival faction of the M23 group.
"I can confirm that Bosco Ntaganda... walked into the US embassy in Kigali this [Monday] morning," US state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.
"He specifically asked to be transferred to the ICC in The Hague."
The US was now in contact with the ICC and the Rwandan government to "facilitate his request", Ms Nuland added.
Rwanda's Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said the government was "currently establishing further details on this evolving situation".
"We have just learned that Gen Ntaganda presented himself at the US Embassy early this morning," she said, in a statement.
Neither the US nor Rwanda recognise the ICC.
Rights groups called for the US to transfer Gen Ntaganda to The Hague.
"Bosco Ntaganda is not called The Terminator for nothing. If he is at the US embassy, the US should immediately hand him over to the International Criminal Court for trial,'' said Sasha Lezhnev, senior analyst for the Enough Project in Washington, Associate Press news agency reported.
"This would send serious signals to current and future warlords who continue to perpetrate atrocities in eastern Congo.''
BBC East Africa correspondent Gabriel Gatehouse says that if Gen Ntaganda does reach the ICC, many will be hoping he can shed light on the accusations of Rwanda's involvement in the Congolese conflicts, including the backing of the M23 rebels.
Eastern DR Congo has been riven by conflict since 1994, when some of the ethnic Hutu groups accused of carrying out the genocide in neighbouring Rwanda fled across the border.
Gen Ntaganda appears to have been throughout the long conflict, fighting for both rebels and government armies.
His military career started in 1990, at the age of 17, when he joined the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels, now the ruling party in Kigali.
In November 2008, international journalists filmed him commanding and ordering rebel troops in the village of Kiwanja, 90km (55 miles) north of Goma in DR Congo, where 150 people were massacred in a single day.
In 2009, he was integrated into the Congolese national army and made a general following a peace deal between the government and rebel troops he commanded.
However, he defected from the army last April, accusing the government of failing to meet its promises.
It is not clear why Gen Ntaganda chose this moment to surrender himself to the ICC, but there are suggestions the split in the M23 movement has made him vulnerable.
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d01299144f6a9a281fc2f1eb6dc29bbf | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22143503 | Gunmen launch deadly attack on Somalia courthouse | Gunmen launch deadly attack on Somalia courthouse
At least 19 people have been killed in bomb and gun attacks in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Sixteen people, including nine attackers, are believed to have died after gunmen stormed the city's main court buildings.
Later a car bomb was detonated on the road to the airport, killing three, including two Turkish aid workers and the attacker.
The Islamist militant group al-Shabab says it carried out the attacks.
Al-Shabab, which has links with al-Qaeda, has been blamed for a series of attacks in Mogadishu in the last two years.
But correspondents say Sunday's violence is the worst seen in the city since al-Shabab was pushed out of the city by AU and Somali forces in August 2011.
The Islamist group still controls most villages and rural areas of southern and central Somalia.
BBC reporter Mohamed Ibrahim at the scene says armed intruders entered the court in the capital and began firing, after which there was an explosion.
A gunfight followed as security forces exchanged fire with the attackers.
Witnesses said at least one car bomb was used in the attack.
"Armed men entered the court and then we heard a blast. Then they started opening fire," witness Hussein Ali, who works at the courts, told Reuters news agency.
Ugandan troops - part of the African Union force stationed in Mogadishu - arrived at the scene shortly after the shooting started.
The Somali government said that nine gunmen had been involved in the assault, and all had now been killed.
Six of them detonated suicide vests, it said.
Other witnesses said the attackers were dressed in Somali military uniform.
People were seen trying to escape the violence from the upper floors of the court buildings by breaking windows and climbing out of the buildings. Some were said to be senior officials.
Our reporter says the courts are located in one of the busiest parts of the city, and were full of people when the attacks happened - Sunday is a normal working day in Somalia.
Deadly attack on Somali courthouse
A second car bomb was detonated later, outside a building housing security forces on the road to the airport.
It was set off as a convoy carrying Turkish aid workers passed, killing two of them.
Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud condemned the latest attacks as "nothing but a sign of desperation by the terrorists".
"Somalia is moving and will keep moving forward and will not be prevented [from achieving] a peaceful and stable Somalia by a few desperate terrorists," he said in a statement.
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3234f1970d2a32b39f78eb28e71100cf | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22277099 | Darfur war crimes suspect rebel Jerbo 'killed in Sudan' | Darfur war crimes suspect rebel Jerbo 'killed in Sudan'
A Sudanese rebel charged with war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been killed, his defence team has said.
Saleh Mohammed Jerbo Jamus died on Friday afternoon during fighting in North Darfur, the statement said.
He was due to go on trial in May 2014 over a deadly attack on African peacekeepers in Darfur in 2007.
The BBC's Anna Holligan in The Hague says the court must get proof of his death before the case is dropped.
Mr Jerbo and fellow Darfur rebel leader Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain face three war crimes charges relating to the killing of 12 African Union peacekeepers in an attack on the AU's Haskanita camp in September 2007.
The two men, who voluntarily surrendered to the ICC in 2010 to face the charges, have been free to leave the Netherlands and appear before the court when summoned.
In 2011, a pre-trial chamber found that there were "substantial grounds" to go ahead with their trial.
Mr Jerbo was chief of staff of SLA-Unity rebel group at the time of the 2007 attack but is currently in the Justice and Equality Movement group, the ICC says.
His defence team said he died in the north of Darfur on the afternoon of 19 April 2013 and was buried on the same day.
"Mr Jerbo was killed during an attack on his location by forces of the Justice and Equality Movement faction led by Gibril Ibrahim," AFP quotes the defence team's notification to the ICC as saying.
Sudan's president, two ministers and a pro-government militia leader have also been indicted by the ICC over Darfur and remain at large.
They deny the charges, saying the scale of the suffering in Darfur has been exaggerated for political reasons.
The conflict began 10 years ago when rebels began attacking government targets, accusing Khartoum of oppressing black Africans in favour of Arab communities.
The mainly Arab Janjaweed militia was then accused of carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing against Darfur's black African population.
More than 300,000 people are thought to have died during the conflict, according to UN estimates.
The government in Khartoum puts the figure at about 12,000 deaths.
As many as 1.4 million remain homeless.
Though violence in Darfur has come down from its peak, there are still clashes between government forces, rebels, bandits and rival ethnic groups.
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bd3376f8191439820b0c632383f59be9 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22361101 | Why Libya's militias are up in arms | Why Libya's militias are up in arms
Libya's disgruntled militiamen are flexing their muscles in the capital, Tripoli.
Both the foreign and justice ministry buildings in the city remain surrounded by a mix of young and older men in pick-up trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns.
Among those around the foreign ministry - the first to be targeted - are some feverish former rebel fighters from the uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. They are threatening a "second revolution" if they continue to be ignored.
Other agitators are part-time activists and supporters of armed groups from various areas.
By Sunday afternoon, some had settled in comfortably for a picnic on the pavement, others milled about.
But they are refusing to back down from their demand calling for the expulsion of officials who worked for the government during the Gaddafi era.
For those uninitiated in Libyan affairs, three separate incidents on Sunday could have been mistaken for a potential coup.
Not only was the foreign ministry surrounded, but the interior ministry was ransacked by gunmen demanding salaries, and there was a scuffle at the state TV station building between gunmen and employees, which a manager said briefly brought work to a halt.
It seems separate armed groups were involved.
"The issue is not simple. It's not like you imagine it," one protester at the foreign ministry tried to explain.
"Who doesn't want his country to stabilise or be secure? We're not here to kill each other," he said.
"But the government didn't respect the rights of the martyrs, and then surprised us with a foreign ministry that was full of people who worked under the Gaddafi government."
There is a complex network of armed groups and militias in the capital.
It includes former rebels from different parts of the country, unemployed vigilantes that never fought, ex-convicts released during the war, and a temporary force formed by the ministry of interior known as the Supreme Security Committee (SSC), which is struggling to remain relevant.
The hardline Salafist Islamist militias are in a league of their own. Other militias largely ostracise them and city residents often point in their direction when something goes wrong.
They have appointed themselves "fighters of crime and drug-trafficking", and last year were accused of destroying some Sufi shrines, but otherwise in Tripoli they tend to be quite discreet in their manoeuvres.
All have been used by the transitional authorities - with varying degrees of frequency and legitimacy - to fill the security vacuum since the fall of Gaddafi.
There are also claims that some of these armed protests are fuelled by political in-fighting within Libya's parliament, the General National Congress (GNC).
Some politicians - it is believed - use the backing of their various regional or city-based militias to press for laws they want to see passed or for the removal of officials they dislike.
The current blockade is driven by calls for the adoption of the so-called "political isolation bill".
Critics of the proposed legislation argue that it is over-reaching in its initial draft.
It is meant to prevent officials who worked under the former Gaddafi-era government from participating in politics.
Politicians in the GNC remain deadlocked over the details of the law, and there are worries that it could see some of the GNC's own members and those in the cabinet isolated.
Political analyst Ibrahim Alkarraz is eager to see the bill adopted.
"The people it applies to should be the ones who have committed crimes against the Libyan people, like abuse of power, rape, and theft. This law is crucial to prevent anyone from sabotaging the revolution," he says.
"I don't consider these armed groups as assailants against the government, but, rather a stimulant.
"They knocked on all doors, and didn't find anyone to listen to them. They demanded change, and nothing changed - not in the slightest," Mr Alkarraz adds.
It is not a narrative that many Libyans will agree with, though many can relate to the premise of his argument.
Guima Gmati, a political activist and one of the founding members of the Taghyeer (Change) Party - which is not represented in parliament - disagrees with the intimidation tactics.
"These are not democratic practices, but rather a practice of chaos in an unacceptable manner," he says.
"The differences in political visions should be resolved through dialogue and the power of logic - not the logic of force and the threat of weapons."
Prime Minister Ali Zidan has maintained an oft-repeated message since he came to power in October last year.
"This will make us more insistent, and we will not surrender to anyone or bend to anyone and no-one can twist our arm," he said on Sunday.
But the GNC has been stormed on several occasions for reasons varying from calls for the adoption of the political isolation law to the botched medical treatment programme for veterans, which was halted for a while because of corruption.
The justice ministry - currently surrounded by militiamen - was also briefly attacked by gunmen following televised remarks by the justice minister about illegal detention centres run by militias.
With every incident - big or small - there is frequently either a self-serving agenda being pursued or an underlying grievance long ignored.
Observers believe it is because the government's new security strategy focuses on gradually phasing militias out and replacing them with an organised national security apparatus.
It is doing this by cutting off salaries and raiding some of the militias' illegal headquarters across the capital.
But it is clear tensions are brewing and pragmatic voices on all sides are often drowned out.
The noose is tightening around those in the government trying to rein in the militias as their strategy begins to unravel.
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8e7bdefc6a139f6ca3d4ef5e9a2342d8 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22402050 | Kenya truth commission 'will recommend prosecutions' | Kenya truth commission 'will recommend prosecutions'
A long-awaited report investigating violence and human rights abuses in Kenya will recommend some prosecutions, one of its authors has told the BBC
Ahmed Sheikh Farah said the Truth Reconciliation and Justice Commission had looked at past injustices going back to independence in 1963.
It was set up following deadly post-election clashes five years ago.
Mr Farah said the report would be published once it was formally handed over to new President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Mr Kenyatta, who won elections in March, has himself been charged by the International Criminal Court with orchestrating some of the violence in 2007/8 when some 1,500 people were killed and more than 300,000 forced to flee their homes. He denies the charges.
The mandate of the commission has been to investigate and recommend appropriate action on human rights abuses committed between Kenyan independence in December 1963 and the end of February 2008 - including politically motivated violence, assassinations, corruption and land disputes.
Mr Farah said the report had been ready to be handed over to the president since Thursday, 2 May - but the commission had been unable to get an appointment at State House owing to Mr Kenyatta's busy schedule.
"I'm told by the attorney general that so long as our report is dated 2 May it can be handed over even next week or any other time," Mr Farah told the BBC.
He said he could not reveal details about the recommendations until its formal publication.
But the commission's mandate meant there had to be an element of justice "to satisfy the victims", he said.
"It was a victim-centred process, so I think that the victims will be happy with this," Mr Farah said.
"Some will [face prosecution], we have recommended some people for that, but remember also that we have been centred on reconciliation - healing, unity that kind of focus."
Mr Farah, who said the report's recommendations were mandatory, is one of five Kenyans on the commission; three other members come from Ethiopia, the US and Zambia.
The deadline for submitting its report to the country's president has already been extended once by six months.
Raila Odinga, who was prime minister in the last power-sharing government and lost presidential elections in March, admitted the process had faced several delays. The report should have been handed over to ex-President Mwai Kibaki.
"But it was felt it might be too explosive and it might have consequences in the elections," he told the BBC's Newsday programme.
The former prime minister, who spent six years in detention under ex-President Daniel arap Moi, said he did not fear the report as he had nothing to hide.
"If they have anything against me I will be prepared to listen to it," he said.
"People are not expecting bombshells; people are expecting the truth. As you know sometimes the truth is bitter but the Bible says that the truth shall set us free," Mr Odinga said.
"Let us for once not continue to gloss over these injustices which have actually contributed to our pent up anger," he said.
"We want these to come out so that our society can reconcile and move forward as one united nation."
Speaking about his election defeat, Mr Odinga said it had come to terms with the disappointment of losing.
"I'm a sportsman and I know that these games can only have two outcomes."
He now even felt happy, he said.
"It's as if a huge load has been lifted from my back, I now feel very relieved."
Mr Kenyatta faced criticism from Western diplomats for seeking the presidency because of the charges he faces at the ICC.
But Mr Odinga said he saw no reason why the charges should interfere with his rival's ability to run the country.
"Kenyans can actually scale the stairs and chew the gum at the same time. I do not think that being charged actually interferes with the discharge of duties of the president," he said.
Mr Kenyatta is expected in the UK next week at the invitation of the British government to attend a conference on Somalia's future.
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166617052603da9a0588f2c0a475d325 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22688093 | Senegal female de-miner hostages freed in Casamance | Senegal female de-miner hostages freed in Casamance
Three of 12 Senegalese de-mining experts taken hostage this month by separatist rebels in Casamance in southern Senegal have been released.
Rebel leader Cesar Atoute Badiate said his group had decided to free the three women on "humanitarian grounds".
They were clearing mines for a South African firm which began working in the area around Ziguinchor in August 2012.
Separatist rebels have been fighting for independence for the Casamance region since 1982.
The government and rebels signed a peace pact at the end of 2004, raising hopes for reconciliation in Casamance, which borders The Gambia to the north and Guinea-Bissau to the south.
But a faction of the Casamance Movement of Democratic Forces (MFDC) has continued to fight.
The female de-miners were handed over at the village of Cassalol over the border in Guinea-Bissau to military and Red Cross officials on Monday.
The women were all in tears and made no statement, the AFP news agency reports.
Senegalese army spokesman Col Abou Thiam told the BBC French service the de-miners would be taken to Guinea-Bissau's capital, Bissau, before being transferred to Dakar.
The 12 de-mining workers were kidnapped on 3 May about 30km (18 miles) from Casamance's main city of Ziguinchor.
Robert Sagna, the ex-mayor of Ziguinchor and an influential political figure, told the Associated Press news agency that negotiations were on-going for the release of the nine other captives, who all work for the specialist de-mining company Mechem.
Last week, the UN news agency Irin reported that de-mining had been temporarily suspended in Casamance because of the kidnapping.
The Senegalese government began new peace negotiations in Rome with rebel representatives last October.
In December the MFDC freed eight hostages it had been holding for a year.
The conflict, which has killed thousands of people, broke out over claims by the region's people that they were being marginalised by the Wolof, Senegal's main ethnic group.
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04afb1675b6395421e1df24294e8eb97 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22850124 | Egyptian warning over Ethiopia Nile dam | Egyptian warning over Ethiopia Nile dam
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has said "all options are open" to deal with any threat to his country's water supply posed by an Ethiopian dam.
Mr Morsi said he was not "calling for war", but that he would not allow Egypt's water supply to be endangered.
Egypt was apparently caught by surprise when Ethiopia started diverting the Blue Nile last month, amid works to construct a hydroelectric dam.
The river is a tributary of the Nile, on which Egypt is heavily dependent.
The Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is a $4.7bn (£3.1bn) project that Ethiopia says will eventually provide 6,000 megawatts of power.
It says the Blue Nile will be slightly diverted but will then be able to follow its natural course.
"Egypt's water security cannot be violated at all," Mr Morsi said on Monday. "As president of the state, I confirm to you that all options are open."
"If Egypt is the Nile's gift, then the Nile is a gift to Egypt,'' he said, quoting popular sayings about the river in an emotive televised speech.
"The lives of the Egyptians are connected around it... as one great people. If it diminishes by one drop then our blood is the alternative."
Analysts say Mr Morsi could be using the issue to distract attention from severe domestic political and economic challenges.
Egypt is particularly dependant on water supply from the Nile, and its growing population has been placing that supply under increasing strain.
Sudan is also reliant on Nile waters.
Egypt cites a colonial era ruling to claim a right to the majority of the Nile's waters for itself and Sudan, but Ethiopia says the ruling is outdated.
Mr Morsi said Egypt had no objection to development projects on Nile basin states, "but on condition that those projects do not affect or damage Egypt's legal and historical rights".
Last week, Egyptian politicians were inadvertently heard on live TV proposing military action over the dam.
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614ef91b3c5065bbfd4e4fabc4e5b2eb | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22914904 | Mali 'suicide-vest workshop found’ | Mali 'suicide-vest workshop found’
A workshop to make suicide bomber vests has been discovered in northern Mali, the French army has said.
About 5,000kg of fertiliser intended to be used as explosive was also uncovered in Bourem, a town on the Niger River between Gao and Timbuktu.
A sample suicide vest and 18 sewing machines were found and it appears local women were employed there, a French army spokesman told the BBC.
French forces have led an operation to oust Islamist militants from the north.
The al-Qaeda-linked groups had taken advantage of a coup in March 2012 to take control of the north of Mali, including major cities such as Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu where they imposed a strict form of Islamic law.
Since January, about 4,000 French troops with the help of Malian and West African soldiers have gained control of the vast desert region's main towns and cities.
Lt Col Cyril Zimmer, French military spokesman in Mali's capital, Bamako, told the BBC the suicide vest workshop was discovered earlier this week.
The fertiliser found on the site in a remote area of Bourem would be enough for plenty of belts and vests, he said.
Initially the soldiers thought they had found a factory to make copies of uniforms worn by Malian soldiers and those in the West African force, but they later found the sample vest.
The BBC's Alex Duval Smith in Bamako says the discovery comes as France announced it was slowing the withdrawal of its soldiers from Mali.
It will still have between 3,000 and 3,500 troops on the ground when nationwide elections are held at the end of July.
France plans to gradually hand over to the Malian army and a 12,600-strong UN peacekeeping force, which is due to deploy next month and will incorporate the 6,000 West African soldiers already in the country.
The former colonial power intends to keep 1,000 troops in the country to work alongside the UN force to tackle further militant threats.
Earlier on Friday, the French army spokesman in Paris, Col Thierry Burkhard, said that "one third of terrorist groups had been neutralised, one third had decided to give up the game and one third has probably evaporated" to Mali's neighbours.
France decided to intervene in Mali as the militants approached Bamako.
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313b262fc64453bd918c16b15b0d8768 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23230999 | Nigeria's Tope Folarin wins Caine writing prize | Nigeria's Tope Folarin wins Caine writing prize
US-based Nigerian writer Tope Folarin has won this year's prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing.
He received the £10,000 ($15,000) prize for his short story Miracle, set in an evangelical Nigerian church in the US state of Texas.
The judges described it as a "delightful and beautifully paced narrative".
Mr Folarin was among five writers short-listed for the prize, regarded as Africa's leading literary award.
Three other Nigerians were short-listed - Elnathan John for Bayan Layi, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim for The Whispering Trees and Chinelo Okparanta for America.
Sierra Leone's Pede Hollist was the only non-Nigerian short-listed for his short story Foreign Aid.
Ms Okparanta was the only female contender.
The chair of judges, Gus Casely-Hayford, awarded Mr Folarin the prize at a dinner held at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in the UK.
"Tope Folarin's Miracle is another superb Caine Prize winner - a delightful and beautifully paced narrative, that is exquisitely observed and utterly compelling," he said.
In Miracle
, a congregation gathers at a church to witness the healing powers of a blind pastor-prophet.
"Religion and the gullibility of those caught in the deceit that sometimes comes with faith rise to the surface as a young boy volunteers to be healed and begins to believe in miracles," the Caine Prize said in a statement.
This is the second consecutive year that a Nigerian has won the prize.
Last year's winner was Rotimi Babatunde for his story Bombay's Republic - about Nigerian soldiers who fought in the Burma campaign during World War II.
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b8733896ade91b2c69645153c76861e3 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23431534 | Robert Mugabe: Is Zimbabwe's ex-president a hero or villain? | Robert Mugabe: Is Zimbabwe's ex-president a hero or villain?
Robert Mugabe, the man who became synonymous with Zimbabwe, has resigned as president after 37 years in power.
For some, he will always remain a hero who brought independence and an end to white-minority rule. Even those who forced him out blamed his wife and "criminals" around him.
But to his growing number of critics, this highly educated, wily politician became the caricature of an African dictator, who destroyed an entire country in order to keep his job.
In the end, it was the security forces, who had been instrumental in intimidating the opposition and keeping him in power, who made him go.
They were incensed when he sacked his long-time ally, Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, paving the way for his much younger wife Grace to succeed him, fearing it meant the end for them as the powers behind the throne.
He had survived numerous previous crises and predictions of his demise but with his powers failing at the age of 93, his former comrades-in-arms turned on him, favouring Mr Mnangagwa.
Before the 2008 elections, Mr Mugabe said: "If you lose an election and are rejected by the people, it is time to leave politics."
But after coming second to Morgan Tsvangirai, Mr Mugabe displayed more characteristic defiance, swearing that "only God" could remove him from office.
And just to be sure, violence was unleashed to preserve his grip on power.
In order to save the lives of his supporters, Mr Tsvangirai pulled out of the second round and although Mr Mugabe was forced to share power with his long-time rival for four years, he remained president.
He even won another election, in 2013, as Mr Tsvangirai had lost a lot of credibility during his years working with Mr Mugabe.
The key to understanding Mr Mugabe is the 1970s guerrilla war where he made his name.
Grace Mugabe profile: Who is Zimbabwe's first lady?
Zimbabwe under Mugabe - in 10 numbers
Even after 37 years in power, Mr Mugabe still maintained the same worldview - the patriotic socialist forces of his Zanu-PF party were still fighting the twin evils of capitalism and colonialism.
Any critics were dismissed as "traitors and sell-outs" - a throwback to the guerrilla war, when such labels could be a death sentence.
He always blamed Zimbabwe's economic problems on a plot by Western countries, led by the UK, to oust him because of his seizure of white-owned farms.
His critics firmly blamed him, saying he had no understanding of how a modern economy worked.
He always concentrated on the question of how to share out the national cake, rather than how to make it grow.
Mr Mugabe once famously said that a country could never go bankrupt - with the world's fastest-shrinking economy and annual inflation of 231 million per cent in July 2008, it seemed as though he was determined to test his theory to the limit.
Professor Tony Hawkins of the University of Zimbabwe once observed that with Zimbabwe's former leader: "Whenever economics gets in the way of politics, politics wins every time."
In 2000, faced with a strong opposition for the first time, he wrecked what was one of Africa's most diversified economies in a bid to retain political control.
He seized the white-owned farms which were the economy's backbone and scared off donors but in purely political terms, Mr Mugabe outsmarted his enemies - he remained in power for another 17 years.
And the tactics he and his supporters used were straight from the guerrilla war.
After he suffered the first electoral defeat of his career, in a 2000 referendum, Mr Mugabe unleashed his personal militia - the self-styled war veterans, backed by the security forces - who used violence and murder as an electoral strategy.
Eight years later, a similar pattern was followed after Mr Mugabe lost the first round of a presidential election to his long-time rival Morgan Tsvangirai.
When needed, all the levers of state - the security forces, civil service, state-owned media - which are mostly controlled by Zanu-PF, were used in the service of the ruling party.
The man who fought for one-man, one-vote introduced a requirement that potential voters prove their residence with utility bills, which the young, unemployed opposition core electorate were unlikely to have.
In fact, the signs of his attitude to opposition were there from the early 1980s, when members of the North-Korea trained Fifth Brigade of the army were sent to Matabeleland, home to his then rival, Joshua Nkomo.
Thousands of civilians were killed before Mr Nkomo agreed to share power with Mr Mugabe - a precursor of what happened with Mr Tsvangirai.
One of the undoubted achievements of the former teacher's 33 years in power was the expansion of education. Zimbabwe still has one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, at 89% of the population.
The now deceased political scientist Masipula Sithole once said that by expanding education, the president was "digging his own grave".
The young beneficiaries were able to analyse Zimbabwe's problems for themselves and most blamed government corruption and mismanagement for the lack of jobs and rising prices.
He often claimed to be fighting on behalf of the rural poor but much of the land he confiscated ended up in the hands of his cronies.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said that Zimbabwe's long-time president had become a cartoon figure of the archetypal African dictator.
During the 2002 presidential campaign, he started wearing brightly coloured shirts emblazoned with his face - a style copied from many of Africa's authoritarian rulers.
For the preceding 20 years, this conservative man was only seen in public with either a stiff suit and tie or safari suit.
He professes to be a staunch Catholic, and worshippers at Harare's Catholic Cathedral were occasionally swamped by security guards when he turned up for Sunday Mass.
However, Mr Mugabe's beliefs did not prevent him from having two children by Grace, then his secretary, while his popular Ghanaian first wife, Sally, was dying from cancer.
But it was his second wife Grace, 40 years his junior, who ultimately proved his downfall.
Although Mr Mugabe outlived many predictions of his demise, the increasing strain of recent years took its toll and his once-impeccable presentation has begun to look rather worn at times.
In 2011, a US diplomatic cable released by
Wikileaks suggested that he was suffering from prostate cancer
.
But he certainly led a healthy lifestyle.
Grace once said that he woke up at 05:00 for his daily exercises, including yoga. He did not drink alcohol or coffee and was largely vegetarian.
Mr Mugabe was 73 when she gave birth to their third child, Chatunga.
If nothing else, Mr Mugabe has always been an extremely proud man.
He often said he would only step down when his "revolution" was complete.
He was referring to the redistribution of white-owned land but he also wanted to hand-pick his successor, who would of course have had to come from the ranks of Zanu-PF.
Didymus Mutasa, once one of Mr Mugabe's closest associates but who has since fallen out with him, once told the BBC that in Zimbabwean culture, kings were only replaced when they die "and Mugabe is our king".
But even his closest allies were not ready for Zimbabwe to be turned into a monarchy, with power retained by a single family.
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3671f7b773fc9ddb1881e269ac2bf7d6 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23453315 | Profiles: Mali presidential contenders | Profiles: Mali presidential contenders
No fewer than 27 candidates - including a lone woman - have joined the fray in Mali's first presidential election since the March 2012 coup that threw the country into chaos.
Reliable polling data is thin on the ground, but a handful of candidates - four former prime ministers, one former finance minister and Mali's former chief geologist - are widely seen as having the best chances because of their prominent backgrounds and political ties.
The incumbent president, Dioncounda Traore, is barred from standing.
All the candidates have similar policies: Restoring stability and national unity, reviving trust in Mali's battered state institutions, fighting corruption and stimulating growth.
A victory for veteran politician Ibrahim Boubacar Keita - known as "IBK" - would be third-time lucky for the man who unsuccessfully stood for the presidency in 2002 and 2007.
In 2007, he lost by a landslide to Amadou Toumani Toure, the president toppled in the March 2012 military coup. Mr Keita served as prime minister from 1994 to 2000 and president of the National Assembly from 2002 to 2007.
Standing for the Rally for Mali (RPM) party - which he founded in 2001 - under the slogan "For Mali's honour", he advocates a tough approach to Islamist and Tuareg separatist rebels in the north, and has promised to root out corruption.
His supporters refer to him as "Kankeletegui", which mean "a man of his word" in the Bambara language.
Another candidate with a long political track record, Soumaila Cisse, 63, is a declared opponent of the military junta that seized power in 2012.
Originally a software engineer by training, he served in a number of key roles - including seven years as finance minister - under President Alpha Oumar Konare in the 1990s, before heading the West African Monetary Union from 2004-2011. He came second to Amadou Toumani Toure in Mali's 2002 presidential election.
In 2012, he fled Bamako after being attacked by soldiers loyal to coup leader Capt Amadou Sanogo.
He formed his Union for the Republic and Democracy (URD) party in 2003 as a breakaway from the Alliance for Democracy in Mali (Adema), Mali's largest party. He promises to foster growth and consolidate Mali's fragile institutions, and has called for the junta to be "deleted" from politics.
This is Soumana Sako's first full run at the presidency after he nearly stood in 1997 but pulled out, alleging widespread fraud.
Serving as finance minister in the 1980s, he went on to become prime minister in the 1991-2 transitional government installed after the ousting of military strongman Lt Moussa Traore. He supported President Amadou Toumani Toure in the 2002 and 2007 elections.
An economist by profession, Mr Sako, 64, has worked with the UN and other international development agencies. His party is the National Convention for a United Africa (CNAS).
Another former prime minister and finance minister, Modibo Sidibe, 60, is close to ousted President Toure.
He was a key aide to the president, as well as his prime minister from 2007-11.
Because of his loyalties, he was briefly arrested following the 2012 coup.
His party is the Alternative Forces for Renewal and Emergence (Fare). He is a policeman and lawyer by training.
The most recent former prime minister in the race, Modibo Diarra, 61, was appointed to head a national unity government by Interim President Dioncounda Traore in April 2012, as part of a stated return to civilian rule.
But he resigned six months later when military leaders were angered by Mr Diarra's support for armed intervention to restore stability by regional body Ecowas.
He trained as astrophysicist, and held jobs as a Nasa interplanetary navigator. In 2006, he became head of Microsoft Africa.
His slogan is "New ideas, new jobs and fresh hope for Mali", and his party is the Rally for Development of Mali (RPDM).
A geologist by training and relatively young, Dramane Dembele, 46, is seen as something as a political outsider, but also as an up-and-coming contender.
He is the candidate of Mali's largest and most well-established party, Alliance for Democracy in Mali (Adema), but it has been deeply divided for decades, potentially weakening his political strength.
The choice of Mr Dembele is has been presented as an attempt to inject "new blood" into Malian politics.
Before entering politics, he held the post of national director of geology and mines.
The only woman candidate,
Aichata Chada Haidara
, 54, is a National Assembly member from Mali's north, and won nationwide recognition for her outspoken opposition to the Islamist militants who occupied the region until a French military intervention earlier this year. Bamako mayor
Moussa Mara
, 38, and
Housseini Amion Guindo
, 43, the owner of a football club and former deputy head of Mali's football federation, are seen as rising political stars.
Niankoro Yeah Samake
, 44, has attracted media attention in the US because of his membership in the Mormon church.
BBC Monitoring
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84339ff76617ebf0043cc39104c53afe | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23511801 | DR Congo unrest: UN orders Goma to be arms-free | DR Congo unrest: UN orders Goma to be arms-free
The UN has given residents of the Democratic Republic of Congo city of Goma 48 hours to disarm, warning force will be used if they fail to do so.
A new 3,000-strong UN intervention brigade is in the area to tackle various rebels, including the M23.
It has been given a mandate to use lethal force against the rebels, who they say have killed civilians in the region surrounding the city of Goma.
Renewed clashes broke out between the rebels and the army earlier this month.
A statement by the UN mission in the DR Congo, Monusco, has given everyone in Goma and surrounding areas until 1400 GMT on Thursday to hand in their weapons to the city's UN base, warning that anyone caught after this would be considered a rebel.
"They will be considered an imminent threat of physical violence to civilians and [UN mission in DR Congo] Monusco will take all necessary measures to disarm them, including by the use of force in accordance with its mandate and rules of engagement," the statement read.
Only soldiers will be allowed to carry weapons, it adds.
The BBC's Maud Jullien in the city says the idea of the new security zone is to establish a clear limit for the M23 - the UN is warning that if they enter this perimeter, the new intervention brigade and the regular Monusco peacekeeping troops will disarm them.
As well as the city, the security zone also includes the airport, the refugee camps and the military bases of both the UN and the army. The M23 do not control any area inside this zone.
Monusco head Lt Gen Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz told the BBC it is a "preventive measure" and the security zone is "forbidden" to any armed groups.
The UN accuses M23 rebels of causing civilian casualties with "indiscriminate and indirect fire" in fresh clashes with the army in Mutaho, about 7 km north of Goma on 14 July.
The 3,000-strong intervention brigade is a new departure for the UN to try to stop the M23 rebels, as well as answer the criticism it faced when the rebels managed to occupy Goma for 10 days in November last year, correspondents say.
The UN says up to 70,000 people have been displaced by recent fighting between the rebels and the army, with many fleeing to neighbouring Uganda.
Last week, the US called on Rwanda to stop backing the M23 rebels. UN experts and DR Congo officials say Rwanda has been supplying troops and military aid to the rebels.
Rwanda has dismissed the claims.
"Scapegoating is not going to help DRC," Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said ahead of a meeting of heads of states in Kenya at the Great Lakes summit which will discuss the unrest in DR Congo.
The M23 rebels, who like Rwanda's leaders are mainly from the Tutsi ethnic group, mutinied and deserted from the Congolese army in April 2012, forcing an estimated 800,000 people from their homes in the ensuing unrest in the mineral-rich region.
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5546bce5c8d7cabdcd0cee95afff901e | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23512279 | Zimbabwe election: queuing voters given more time | Zimbabwe election: queuing voters given more time
Zimbabwean election officials have been allowing people to vote after the official end of polling, as a high turnout led to long queues.
Most polling stations are now closed but a few have stayed open for late voters in the fiercely contested presidential and parliamentary poll.
President Robert Mugabe, 89, has said he will step down after 33 years in power if he and his Zanu-PF party lose.
PM Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC says Zanu-PF doctored the electoral roll.
It said the rolls contained the names of two million dead people, and there were concerns about the number of people being turned away from polling stations. Zanu-PF denies the claims.
Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have shared an uneasy coalition government since 2009 under a deal brokered to end the deadly violence that erupted after a disputed presidential poll the previous year.
Mr Mugabe dismissed the MDC's allegations of vote-rigging as "politicking" as he voted in the capital Harare's Highfield township.
"They want to find a way out," Mr Mugabe said.
"I am sure people will vote freely and fairly, there is no pressure being exerted on anyone."
Mr Tsvangirai described casting his ballot as an emotional moment "after all the conflict, the stalemate, the suspicion, the hostility".
"This is a very historic moment for us," he said.
Mr Tsvangirai won the most votes in the first round of the 2008 poll, but pulled out of the run-off with Mr Mugabe because of attacks on his supporters, which left about 200 dead.
The government barred Western observers from monitoring Wednesday's elections, but the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), as well as local organisations, have been accredited.
Polls opened at 07:00 local time (05:00 GMT) and had been due to close at 19:00.
However, because of the high turnout election officials said people who were still waiting in queues to vote by 19:00 would have until midnight to cast their ballots.
Results are due within five days.
Zimbabwe Election Support Network, the main domestic monitoring agency, said the vote appeared to be taking place without too many problems, Reuters news agency reports.
"There are some concerns around long queues, but generally, it's smooth," said its spokesman Thabani Nyoni.
Former Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo, who heads a group of African Union monitors, said the elections seemed credible.
"It's been quiet, it's been orderly. The first place I called in this morning, they opened prompt at seven o'clock and there haven't been any serious incidents that... would not reflect the will of the people." he told Reuters.
Big queues have been reported across the country, but there have been numerous complaints that voters were unable to find their names on the electoral roll.
According to villagers, MDC polling agents and local election observers, some irregularities were recorded in parts of rural Masvingo district.
Traditional leaders and village heads are alleged to have lined up residents, forcibly marched them to the polling stations and given them voting numbers as if to cross-check who they had voted for.
There are also suggestions that in these rural areas some literate people were forced to pretend they could not read or write and were assisted to cast their vote in favour of Zanu-PF.
On Tuesday, the MDC accused Zanu-PF of doctoring the roll of registered voters, which was released by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) only on the eve of the polls after weeks of delay.
The MDC claimed the roll dated back to 1985 and was full of anomalies.
A BBC correspondent has seen the document and says it features the names of thousands of dead people.
MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti said there were as many as two million such names, while some genuine voters were not finding their names on the rolls.
"The greatest worry which we have is the number of persons that are being turned away," he added.
A Zanu-PF spokesman denied the allegations and pointed out that appointees from both parties were on Zec. He also accused Mr Biti, who is Finance Minister, of not funding the commission properly. Zec has not commented.
In addition to Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai, there are three other candidates standing for the presidency - Welshman Ncube, leader of the breakaway MDC-Mutambara; Dumiso Dabengwa of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu), and Kisinoti Munodei Mukwazhe, who represents the small Zimbabwe Development Party (ZDP).
To be declared a winner, a presidential candidate must win more than 50% of the vote. If no candidate reaches this mark, a run-off will be held on 11 September.
The elections will be the first to be held under the new constitution approved in a referendum in March this year.
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5d440f587e7fc265937ac6f78b9bfd0d | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23519330 | DR Congo unrest: Rwanda 'recruiting for M23 rebels' | DR Congo unrest: Rwanda 'recruiting for M23 rebels'
Four Rwandans have told the BBC the army forcibly recruited them to fight for the M23 rebel group in neighbouring eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
The four said they were seeking asylum in Uganda after fleeing the fighting.
The Rwandan army dismissed their claim, saying they must have made up their stories to get asylum.
Last week, the US called on Rwanda to stop backing the M23. UN experts and DR Congo officials say Rwanda has been sending troops to support the rebels.
Some 800,000 people have been displaced in resource-rich eastern DR Congo since the M23 launched its rebellion in April 2012.
Like Rwanda's leadership, the group mostly comes from the Tutsi community.
But Rwanda denies backing the rebels.
The UN has given residents of the main city in eastern DR Congo, Goma, until 1400 GMT on Thursday to disarm, warning force will be used if they fail to do so.
A new 3,000-strong UN intervention brigade is in the area to tackle various rebels, including the M23.
The four deserters, who included a man who described himself a captain in the Rwandan army, spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity.
He deserted after seeing many innocent people die, the man said.
He described Rwanda's President Paul Kagame as the commander-in-chief of the M23.
"Whatever he says has to be done," he said.
Mr Kagame's spokeswoman Yolande Makolo dismissed the allegations as nonsense.
"We need to stop the cycle of rumours, propaganda and blame and get on with the business of building enduring peace," she said.
Another deserter, who described himself as a medical student, told the BBC he was "kidnapped" by soldiers in the border town of Gisenyi in August 2012, and taken across the border where he treated more than 300 fellow recruits wounded in fighting.
"They took them to the frontline before finishing their training," he said.
Rwandan military spokesman Joseph Nzabamwita said he could only comment if the BBC divulged the names of their sources, adding the men must have manufactured the stories to claim asylum.
New York-based pressure group Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Carina Tarstaskian said HRW had received similar reports to those of the BBC.
M23 deserters told HRW that Rwandan officers provided them with military training in eastern DR Congo, she said.
HRW was also aware of several Rwandan children who were approached by civilians with the promise of jobs in eastern DR Congo, only to be recruited into M23, Ms Tarstaskian said.
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ce749dc9dcc9c9509a58d8f377b9f635 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23618727 | Mandela death: How he survived 27 years in prison | Mandela death: How he survived 27 years in prison
"I went for a long holiday for 27 years," Nelson Mandela once said of his years in prison.
It was another example of the dry, razor-sharp and often self-deprecating humour for which South Africa's first black president was famous.
The prison years ended in a cottage he had to himself in the garden of a jail near Cape Town then known as Victor Verster - with TV, radio, newspapers, a swimming pool and any visitors he wanted.
But he was still in prison. And the greatest number of years that he was in prison - 18 out of 27 - were spent on Robben Island, where the contrast could not have been greater.
Banishment
The notorious island, within sight of the city of Cape Town and Table Mountain, acquired its name from the seals that once populated it in multitudes - robben being the Dutch word for seal. Its three centuries as a prison island and a place of banishment were punctuated by a period as a leper colony.
A warder's first words when Nelson Mandela and his ANC comrades arrived were: "This is the Island. This is where you will die."
They faced a harsh regime in a new cell block constructed for political prisoners. Each had a single cell some seven foot square around a concrete courtyard, with a slop bucket. To start with, they were allowed no reading materials.
They crushed stones with a hammer to make gravel and were made to work in a blindingly bright quarry digging out the limestone.
Fellow prisoner Walter Sisulu spoke of a day Nelson Mandela's emerging leadership among the inmates was displayed in a rebellion over the quarry: "The prison authorities would rush us…'Hardloop!' That means run. One day they did it with us. It was Nelson who said: 'Comrades let's be slower than ever.' It was clear therefore that the steps we were taking would make it impossible ever to reach the quarry where we were going to. They were compelled to negotiate with Nelson. That brought about the recognition of his leadership."
Prisoner 46664, as he was known - the 466th prisoner to arrive in 1964 - would be the first to protest over ill-treatment and he would often be locked up in solitary as punishment.
"In those early years, isolation became a habit. We were routinely charged for the smallest infractions and sentenced to isolation," he wrote in his autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom. "The authorities believed that isolation was the cure for our defiance and rebelliousness."
"I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There was no end and no beginning; there is only one's own mind, which can begin to play tricks."
Still, his determination and wit were clearly undiminished. His lawyer George Bizos saw it at first hand.
"On my first visit to Robben Island he was brought to the consulting room by no less than eight warders, two in front, two on each side and two at the back… in shorts and without socks. And the thing that was odd about it is that, unlike any other prisoner I have ever seen, he was setting the pace at which this group was coming towards the consulting room. And then with all gravitas he said 'You know, George, this place really has made me forget my manners. I haven't introduced you to my guard of honour'."
University behind bars
After the first few months on the island, life settled into a pattern.
"Prison life is about routine: each day like the one before; each week like the one before it, so that the months and years blend into each other," Mr Mandela wrote.
Over time, and varying according to who was running the prison, so-called privileges would be granted. Those who wanted could apply for permission to study.
Although some subjects such as politics and military history were forbidden, Robben Island became known as a "university behind bars".
ANC and Communist Party stalwart Mac Maharaj remembers it as a cause of a falling out with Nelson Mandela.
"He was urging let us study Afrikaans and I was saying no way - this is the language of the damn oppressor. He persuaded me by saying,' Mac, we are in for a protracted war. You can't dream of ambushing the enemy if you can't understand the general commanding the forces. You have to read their literature and poetry, you have to understand their culture so that you get into the mind of the general.'
"Here he was showing right at the outset this focus of thinking of the other side, understanding them, anticipating them and so at the end of the day understanding how to accommodate them."
When Nelson Mandela reflected on his Robben Island experiences on returning there in 1994 he said: "Wounds that can't be seen are more painful than those that can be seen and cured by a doctor. One of the saddest moments of my life in prison was the death of my mother. The next shattering experience was the death of my eldest son in a car accident." He was refused permission to attend either funeral.
Nelson Mandela's letters from prison to his second wife Winnie are poignant in the way they show the price paid for his total immersion in the anti-apartheid struggle, as is her account of this period.
Left to raise their children alone, Winnie once described the impact of taking them to see him in prison: "Taking them at that age to their father - their father of that stature - was so traumatic. It was one of the most painful moments actually. And I could see the strain on my children both before their visit and for quite some time after they had some contact with their father."
War of attrition
By the time Nelson Mandela was moved to Pollsmoor prison on the mainland, he was the world's most famous but perhaps least recognisable political prisoner. No contemporary photograph of him had been seen for years.
The late anti-apartheid activist Amina Cachalia, who had known him well before he went into prison, visited him. She told me she had taken a small camera into the prison with her, and as they had lunch she reached for her bag and said she was going to take a picture of him.
He held her by the arm and shook his head. She said Nelson Mandela was afraid they would confiscate the camera and terminate the visit.
Amina Cachalia laughed at the thought of the impact her photograph would have had. "He deprived me of being a millionairess," she joked.
Fellow prisoner Ahmed Kathrada recalled that in Pollsmoor in 1985, Nelson Mandela was called to the prison office and then returned to his ANC colleagues and started reading the newspapers. After a few minutes he said to them: "Oh by the way chaps, I was told President Botha has offered to release us."
"After 20 years or more of us being in prison and that's how cool he was… 'By the way this has happened'," Mr Kathrada told me. "We didn't even have to mull over it and that very night he wrote the letter. We all read through it and signed it, rejecting the offer."
Even though later Nelson Mandela was to have many meetings with the government and to be moved to the more comfortable conditions of his villa at Victor Verster prison - attending Sunday services, playing chess, teaching political economy to his fellow prisoners - he always sought to give the ANC exiled leadership no cause to be suspicious of his intentions and refused to put his own freedom before that of others and before the goals of the movement.
Ahmed Kathrada told me that Nelson Mandela fought a war of attrition in everything. In prison, he once played chess against a medical student who had just come in for five years.
"They played for many hours in one day and they had to ask the warders to lock the chessboard up in the cell next door. They continued the next day and each move was so slow this was a war of attrition. After a few hours the young chap said 'Look, you win. Just take your victory.' He wins."
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e111b42a4be152dc53b57fd239dc2128 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23949506 | Sudan's Bashir tells Salva Kiir oil flows will continue | Sudan's Bashir tells Salva Kiir oil flows will continue
Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has ended his threat to block South Sudan's oil exports after talks with its leader, Salva Kiir.
Sudan will abide by all agreements reached with the South after its independence in 2011, Mr Bashir said.
Mr Bashir had said Sudan would close its pipelines to oil from the South this Friday, accusing its neighbour of backing rebels.
South Sudan denied the charge and in turn accused Sudan of destabilising it.
South Sudan took with it nearly three-quarters of Sudan's oil production when it declared independence following decades of conflict.
"The agreements we signed call for the transport of South Sudan's oil through Sudan's facilities and ports," Mr Bashir said after the summit in Khartoum.
Mr Kiir said Sudan and South Sudan had to "close the old chapters and open a new page", AFP news agency reports.
"These two countries cannot always remain on a war footing. If they do that, they cannot offer services to their citizens," he is quoted as saying.
Mr Kiir also called for the reopening of their border for trade, a move agreed in September but not yet implemented by Sudan because of South Sudan's alleged support for rebels, Reuters news agency reports.
"You closed the border. We didn't do that but we're ready to reopen it within 24 hours," Mr Kiir is quoted as telling Mr Bashir.
He said South Sudan was not supporting the rebels fighting Mr Bashir's government and "this can be seen in reality", AFP reports.
The Sudanese army is fighting a rebel insurgency in at least three regions.
An umbrella rebel group called the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) has launched attacks on several towns, briefly occupying the major city of Um Rawaba in central Sudan in April.
The two sides fell out over how much the South should pay to export its oil through Sudanese pipelines.
South Sudan, which gets 98% of its revenues from oil, has huge reserves but is landlocked and reliant on Sudan's ports for export.
At the height of the dispute last year, the South shut down its entire oil output, badly hitting the economies of both countries.
Production resumed in April this year but the following month, Mr Bashir threatened to turn off the taps once more.
|
f3eaca78d6957b4de882e6ecc1834d42 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23960843 | Nigeria's Dangote signs deal to build oil refinery | Nigeria's Dangote signs deal to build oil refinery
Africa's wealthiest man, Aliko Dangote, has signed a multi-billion dollar deal with banks to finance the building of an oil refinery in Nigeria.
The refinery would be the largest in Africa, turning Nigeria into a petroleum exporter, he told the BBC.
Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer but lacks refining capacity and has to import most of its fuel.
The West African state is often hit by fuel shortages, and conflict over control of its oil wealth.
People in Nigeria's oil-producing southern Niger Delta region are among the country's poorest and accuse the government and oil companies of failing to develop the area.
Mr Dangote, a Nigerian who made his fortune in cement, flour and sugar, is worth an estimated $16bn (£10bn) and has topped the
Forbes list
of Africa's richest men for the past three years.
Mr Dangote told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme the refinery would create "thousands" of jobs.
It would be built in the south-west and would become operational in 2016, he said.
Mr Dangote signed a $3.3bn loan deal with local and foreign banks to build the refinery, as well as fertiliser and petrochemical plants.
The entire venture would cost $9bn, with $3bn in equity from Dangote Industries and $6bn to be raised in loan capital.
The initial loan facility was co-ordinated globally by Standard Chartered and in Nigeria by Guaranty Trust Bank,
London's Financial Times newspaper reports
.
"At least for the first time in our lifetime, we'll see Nigeria exporting petroleum products," Mr Dangote told Focus on Africa on the BBC World Service.
"We'll also see Nigeria for the first time exporting fertiliser rather than using hard-earned foreign exchange to import fertiliser," he added.
Nigeria currently imports more than three-quarters of its fuel despite being the continent's biggest producer.
Although it has two refineries in the Port Harcourt area, neither runs at full capacity.
Previous efforts to repair Nigeria's dilapidated refineries and build new ones have been scuppered to protect the interests of powerful fuel importers, some of whom have been linked to a subsidy scam costing the country billions of dollars a year, correspondents say.
Fuel in Nigeria is sold at a subsidised price. A government attempt to remove the subsidy in 2012 led to nationwide protests. The plan was subsequently dropped.
Last year an investigation revealed that in two years, more than $6bn was lost in a fuel subsidy scam.
|
242d5bc91a1b052f478cf915700d501d | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24126231 | Kenya's William Ruto trial: 'Church victim' testifies at ICC | Kenya's William Ruto trial: 'Church victim' testifies at ICC
The first prosecution witness is giving evidence at Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto's trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Mr Ruto has been charged with crimes against humanity, following allegations that he orchestrated violence after disputed elections in 2007.
Mr Ruto, the first serving official to appear at the ICC, denies the charge.
The court ruled the witness's identity, an alleged survivor of a church arson attack, should not be revealed.
This was for her own safety and she will be known by the number 536.
She is giving evidence from behind a curtain - on the court video her image is pixelated and voice distorted.
Mr Ruto is watching on her left, but she is hidden from him.
Chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has previously said that witnesses have been intimidated in an attempt to prevent them from giving evidence.
Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta is due to stand trial in November. He also denies charges of fuelling violence after the 2007 election.
Some 1,200 people were killed and 600,000 forced from their homes in weeks of violence after the election.
More than 40,000 people are estimated to be still living in camps, which Mr Kenyatta has promised to close by 20 September.
He and Mr Ruto were on opposite sides during the 2007 election, but formed an alliance to win elections in March this year.
Analysts believe the ICC charges bolstered their campaign, as many Kenyans accused the court of interfering in Kenya's domestic affairs.
Prosecutor Anton Steynberg told the court that "22 victims and witnesses, common Kenyan people, who will describe the attacks" would be called to testify in Mr Ruto's trial, Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper reports.
Mr Ruto is being charged alongside journalist Joshua arap Sang.
He is the head of a Kalenjin-language radio station and is accused of whipping up ethnic hatred - a charge he denies.
The first witness was a victim of an arson attack on New Year's Day 2008 on the Kiambaa Church in Kenya's Rift Valley, one of the areas worst-affected by the violence.
A mob set ablaze the church where people were taking refuge, burning 36 people beyond recognition, correspondents say.
The witness, a member of the Kikuyu ethnic group, told the court that thousands of people surged towards the church, chanting, their faces disguised with white clay, many wearing cloths and bandanas.
They were armed with traditional weapons, machetes, axes and sticks, she said.
She was among hundreds of people who had earlier fled to the church, with mattresses and blankets, after members of the rival Kalenjin ethnic group warned of consequences if they did not vote for the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), the woman said.
Mr Ruto was at the time a member of the ODM, led by Raila Odinga who later became prime minister in the unity government that followed the violence.
"The door [to the church] was barricaded with bicycles, and we were all trying to escape. I threw my child out of the window," Reuters news agency quotes the witness as saying.
"When somebody tried to leave the church, they would grab the person and push them back inside," she said, the AFP news agency reports.
The violence erupted after the ODM said it had been robbed of victory
It then took ethnic overtones, with Kenya's main groups - especially Kikuyus and Kalenjins - involved in attacks and reprisal attacks.
When Mr Ruto appeared in court last week, Ms Bensouda accused him of forming an "army" of Kalenjin youth to fight for power.
Mr Ruto's defence lawyer, Karim Khan, accused the prosecution of building its case on "a conspiracy of lies".
|
9c6d46441680d2687ca42ea6ae799a74 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24159849 | William Ruto trial: Kenyan's fears over witness claims | William Ruto trial: Kenyan's fears over witness claims
A Kenyan woman says she fears for her life after being wrongly identified as a prosecution witness in the International Criminal Court (ICC) trial of Deputy President William Ruto.
Rahab Muthoni has asked for police protection after her photo was circulated on social media.
The court ordered that the identity of the first prosecution witness be protected for her own safety.
Mr Ruto denies organising violence after the December 2007 elections.
He is charged with crimes against humanity over the violence, in which some 1,200 people died and 600,000 were forced from their homes.
ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has previously complained that witnesses are being intimidated, leading some of them to withdraw from the case.
On Wednesday, ICC judge Chile Eboe-Osuji warned that anybody revealing the identity of witnesses, or threatening them, would face prosecution.
He was speaking after being told that bloggers were circulating the name and photo of a woman said to be the first witness.
The photo was of Ms Muthoni but a different name was used.
Ms Muthoni lives in Eldoret, Mr Ruto's home town.
She is understood to have been a victim of the post-election violence in which people were attacked and killed because of their ethnic origin.
The first witness at The Hague gave evidence from behind a curtain and with her face pixelated and voice distorted on the court video.
She is being referred to as witness 536.
The BBC's Odhiambo Joseph says the ICC proceedings are being closely followed in Kenya but are dividing the country along political and ethnic lines.
Mr Ruto and President Uhuru Kenyatta were elected in March.
They used their prosecutions by the ICC to bolster their campaign by portraying them as foreign interference in domestic affairs.
Mr Kenyatta, who denies similar charges, is due to go on trial in November.
Radio executive Joshua arap Sang is standing trial alongside Mr Ruto - he too has pleaded not guilty.
Our reporter says that the ICC does have jurisdiction in Kenya, but the situation is complicated as it relies on political goodwill.
Furthermore, parliament recently voted to withdraw from the ICC, which would end the court's jurisdiction in the country.
Witness 536 broke down in court during her testimony on Tuesday.
She is said to have survived the attack on the Kiambaa Church in which about 36 people were burnt to death.
She is a member of the Kikuyu ethnic group, who were targeted by Mr Ruto's Kalenjin community, allegedly at his behest.
Mr Ruto is the first serving official to appear at the ICC.
|
4e37b90b1736a67aa5fc0ad4ee608636 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24195845 | Nairobi Westgate attack: The victims | Nairobi Westgate attack: The victims
At least 67 people are known to have died since al-Shabab militants attacked the Westgate shopping centre in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on Saturday.
This page showing what we know about the victims will be updated as new information comes to light.
Ruhila Adatia-Sood, a popular TV and radio personality, was in the rooftop car park of the Westgate shopping centre where she was part of a team hosting a cooking competition for children at the time of the attack.
She married Ketan Sood, who worked for USAid in Nairobi,
in January 2012 in what has been described as Swahili-themed wedding
.
She was six months' pregnant with their first child when she died.
According to reports, Ms Adatia-Sood was rushed to Aga Khan Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.
She was "known throughout Kenya for her passion, vibrancy, and gift for making people smile",
USAid administrator Rajiv Shah said in a statement
.
On her Twitter account
, she described herself as a "food lover, thrill seeker and a bungee jump away from sanity".
A graduate of South Africa's Rhodes University in Grahamstown, her three elder sisters described her
as "a go-getter since childhood"
.
She was a presenter on Radio Africa media group's East FM and said she hosted entertainment news on Kiss TV, E-News, Kiss 100 and X-FM.
On Saturday she was tweeting Instagram photos of those attending the cooking competition in the car park.
Her colleague, Kamal Kaur, also a radio presenter, was helping with the competition and was at the event with her two young children when she said they all came under attack from a gunman.
"A grenade was thrown at us and it went off. At the same time he shot at us. The bullet missed my son by just an inch; it bounced off the wall and hit the boy who was next to him," she told the BBC.
"Then he [the attacker] came out again with his big rifle. My daughter kept whispering to everybody: 'Pretend you're dead! Pretend you're dead! He won't shoot...pretend you're dead.'
Ms Kaur and her children managed to escape - her children were hit in their legs by shrapnel.
"My daughter is very devastated because my colleague Ruhila... she was six months pregnant and she lost her life and we're very devastated about that... Very devastated about that," Ms Kaur said.
President Uhuru Kenyatta's nephew Mbugua Mwangi and his fiancee Rosemary Wahito are among the many Kenyans killed in the attack on the Westgate shopping centre.
Addressing the nation on Saturday, Uhuru Kenyatta said:
"I ask God to give you comfort as you confront this tragedy, and I know what you feel having also lost very close family members in this deadly attack."
According to the Irish Independent newspaper, Mr Mwangi's mother, Catherine Muigai Mwangi, had recently returned home from Dublin following a six-year posting as Kenya's ambassador to Ireland.
Mr Kenyatta's elder sister Christine Wambui Pratt was also at Westgate at the time of the attack, but managed to escape.
A sales and marketing director of Bidco, a company that primarily makes cooking oil, Mitul Shah was also up in the rooftop car park at the cooking competition.
"He died trying to save stranded children. He died as a hero," Half Jadhe Half Kyuk
wrote on the KenyaList.com message board
.
He described Mitul Shah as a fervent Manchester United fan.
He was also chairman of Bidco's football team, which plays in the second division.
An aviation and communications expert and a lawyer by training, Peter Simani was meeting a friend at Westgate mall on Saturday when the militants burst in.
He and his friend both died in the attack. His friend's name is not known yet.
Peter Simani chaired the Political Parties Dispute Tribunal and was also a director of the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK).
Ngene Gituku, chairman of the CCK board, said that Kenya had lost a "brilliant lawyer with an incisive and highly analytical mind".
"My board highly relied on Mr Simani's guidance on delicate decisions on legal issues, especially those touching on the regulation of the fast-growing ICT sector," he said in a statement.
The 24-year-old food entrepreneur died on Saturday. It is likely he was at the food competition taking place in the rooftop car park.
He founded the food website
Pika Chakula
, which means "cook food" in KiSwahili, with a mission to "teach people how to cook".
"A very smart gentle man who enjoyed the simple things in life, outgoing and never learnt how to say no. Never had nothing against any one," said a post on a
Facebook page set up to remember him
.
His funeral was held on Monday at the Hindu Crematorium in Nairobi.
"To all our Pika Chakula fans. This week we will be posting Rajan Solanki's favourite dishes and recipes,"
the website tweeted
on Tuesday.
Known as Manogi, he owned the Sona Shoppe, a photography studio on ground floor of the mall.
The 52-year-old is survived by his wife Sangu and his two children, Nishiv and Sonali, and a large extended family.
Mr Shah was born in Nairobi, where he graduated from Jamhuri High School.
His family described him as an astute businessman and entrepreneur, who had had numerous businesses in his time including Raja's Souvenirs, Hakuna Matata and Sona Shoppe, a chain of photography shops.
He was passionate about sport, an avid reader and enjoyed politics, films and board games.
"He had a wonderful and witty sense of humour, was inquisitive and intelligent yet very easygoing with an open heart and made a lasting impression," his son Nishiv told the BBC.
"He always made the best of any situation and was always there whenever anyone needed him. His jovial personality and contagious smile will be deeply missed by all.
"A kind soul with a heart of gold, a gem never to be forgotten."
A student at the private Oshawal Academy near Westgate shopping centre, she died on Saturday during the shoot-out.
"Head girl, dancer, awesome friend,"
a Facebook community set up to remember her says
.
"A girl who you could talk to about anything," the post continues.
Jyoti Kharmes Vaya
was a 37-year-old mother of three whose husband worked for Victoria Commercial bank, it said.
Maltiben Ramesh Vaya
was aged 41, a mother of two who worked for the Bank of Baroda.
"Both daughters-in-law succumbed to injuries related to gunshot wounds in yesterday's terror attack in Nairobi's Westgate Mall," a message on Facebook
posted by the Pattni Brotherhood community in Nairobi said
.
President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Tuesday that
six members of the security forces
had died during the operation.
The chief executive of Paramount Bank, Ayaz Merali, lost his wife
Salima Ayaz Merali
and daughter
Nuriana Ayaz Merali
.
Nehal Vekaria,
a 16-year-old student. On Sunday, her family held her funeral where she was cremated.
The Daily Nation newspaper named
Harun Oyieke
, a lecturer at Co-operative University College of Kenya, as another of the victims.
The UK Foreign Office had said six Britons were among those killed, but it has revised that number to five because one man previously thought to be British was actually a Kenyan national.
None of the dead Britons has been formally identified, but they are believed to include
Ross Langdon
, who had dual Australian and British nationality (see below), and eight-year-old
Jennah Bawa.
Jennah, daughter of Louis Bawa, had been on a shopping trip with her Kenyan-born mother,
Zahira Bawa
, on Saturday in Westgate. It is not clear if Mrs Bawa has been counted as one of the dead Britons.
The family lived in Leamington Spa until last year, when lawyer Mrs Bawa is reported to have returned to Kenya to look after her mother. Mr Bawa then took a job as the chief executive of a marketing company in Dubai and began travelling to see his family in Nairobi at weekends.
"The last time I spoke to them was on Friday evening, I didn't get a chance to catch up with them on Saturday morning. They were going to Westgate to do what they always did, grocery shopping. This time they didn't come home," Mr Bawa
told the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper
.
"Zahira and Jennah were Muslims, but these animals just shot them the same as all of the others," he told the paper.
Mr Bawa had spent agonising hours outside the shopping mall, hoping to hear from them. He found out on Sunday night that they were among the dead, identifying them from photographs taken of victims inside the shopping centre.
British citizen
Niall Saville
was wounded in the attack, but his wife
Kang
Moon-hee
, from South Korea, was killed.
The UK Foreign Office released a statement on behalf of their families which said the couple had lived in numerous locations.
Both families, the statement said, "need to focus on grieving and supporting Niall through his recovery".
The statement added: "The Saville and Kang families are devastated and heartbroken by the sudden loss of Moon-hee.
"She was very close to the Saville family and brought so much joy to all of their lives."
Ross Langdon
, an Australian architect who grew up in Tasmania and had dual British nationality, died in the shootout along with his Dutch girlfriend
Elif Yavuz
, a 33-year-old health worker and Harvard graduate.
Mr Langdon co-founded Regional Associates and worked in East Africa on sustainable architecture projects.
"Profoundly talented and full of life, Ross enriched the lives of all those around him,"
the company said on its website
.
"Ross's leadership on projects throughout East Africa was inspirational, and he will be will be very, very sorely missed by us all."
Peter Adams, a family friend in Tasmania,
paid tribute to the couple on his blog
: "There just was no dark side to Ross that I ever saw in the 20 or so years I knew him.
"We all took immense pride in both his architectural abilities and his very generous, positive, and loving personality."
Amongst his achievements was his "pro-bono" design for an Aids hospital in Kenya, Mr Adams said.
"In Uganda he designed and supervised a unique eco-village employing only local labour," he added.
Ms Yavuz, who was expecting their first child in two weeks' time, worked for the Clinton Foundation as a senior vaccines researcher based in Tanzania.
The UK's Daily Mail reports that in photographs from the mall that are too graphic to print, Mr Langdon is seen cradling Ms Yavuz, a hand draped protectively over her stomach.
The couple are believed to have travelled for the birth from Tanzania to Nairobi, because of its advanced health care facilities.
Former US President Bill Clinton and his family paid tribute to Ms Yavuz, saying she was "brilliant, dedicated and deeply admired by her colleagues".
"Elif devoted her life to helping others, particularly people in developing countries suffering from malaria and HIV/Aids,"
the Clinton family statement said
.
The 59-year-old from the Vancouver area was on a business trip to Nairobi when he was killed at Westgate, a family member has said.
According to Canada's QMI news agency, he was a hotelier and was at a coffee shop with relatives when the attack happened.
His family in Canada, including three adult daughters, found out about the tragedy through relatives who survived the attack, The Province paper in British Columbia reported.
A 29-year-old Canadian diplomat who served at the country's high commission in Kenya as a liaison officer with the Canada Border Services Agency.
Her husband, Robert Munk, was injured in the attack but has since been released from hospital, officials said.
The 78-year-old Ghanaian was a renowned poet - regarded as literary royalty at home, where his poetry and novels are considered essential reading at schools.
He was in Nairobi as a participant in the Storymoja Hay Festival and was due to perform on Saturday evening.
He became known for his poetry in the 1960s and was inspired by the singing and oral storytelling of his Ewe ethnic group - his first published collection was called Rediscovery.
In the 1970s he taught at several universities in the US, returning to Ghana in 1975 to take up a position as head of English at the University of Cape Coast.
Within months he was arrested and detained for a year on suspicion of treason during the military rule of Col Ignatius Acheampong.
This provoked protests from Amnesty International and writers such as the beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
He became more politically active after his incarceration, serving as Ghana's ambassador to Brazil in the 1980s, and - after the country's return to multi-party democracy - as ambassador to the UN.
Ghana's President John Mahama said he was shocked by such a sad twist of fate: "A writer, politician and traditionalist with great wit, sense of humour and very well-spoken. He will be sorely missed."
Mr Awoonor's son was with him in Nairobi and was shot in the shoulder during the attack.
The eight-year-old son of a branch manager for the Bank of Baroda was among those who died in the mall, Indian external ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin
said on Twitter
.
From the southern city of Bangalore, Sudharshan Nagaraj had only arrived in Nairobi the day before he was killed, Mr Akbaruddin said.
He was in the book trade and was also due to travel to Kampala in neighbouring Uganda and Ghana's capital, Accra.
A 40-year-old was from Tamil Nadu in southern India, Sridhar Natarajan was working for a pharmaceutical firm in Nairobi, Mr Akbaruddin
said
.
The ministry spokesman said that the size of the Indian community and those of Indian origin in Kenya was estimated to be 70,000.
A doctor and former deputy head of the Kenyan branch of the UN children's fund, Juan Ortiz-Iruri was at the shopping centre with his 13-year-old daughter Juanita.
The 63-year-old died at the scene, his daughter was shot in the leg and hand and required surgery but is expected to survive, his son Ricardo Ortiz told Peru's RPP radio.
He was due to take up a full-time post at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK and was expected to arrive at its Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health (CMNH) this week.
The 38-year-old was fatally wounded from gunshot wounds and shrapnel from a grenade, South Korean's Yonhap news agency reported.
Sources told the agency she died while being treated at a hospital on Sunday.
Her husband, Niall Saville - who is a British citizen - has received surgery for a gunshot wound and is reportedly currently in a stable condition.
According to AFP, the couple had only recently moved to Nairobi from Dubai.
The UK Foreign Office released a statement on behalf of the Saville and Kang families which described Ms Kang as "a bright, loving, kind and genuine person who will be greatly missed".
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar
issued a statement
extending condolences to Ravrinda Ramrattan's family. Mr Ramrattan had been working in Kenya as an economist.
China:
China's official news agency reported that a 38-year-old Chinese woman had been killed - her teenage son was injured.
France:
A mother and daughter were "executed in the parking lot" of Westgate, Helene Conway-Mouret, the French minister in charge of nationals living abroad, told private French channel BFM-TV.
South Africa:
One national has died at Westgate, officials said.
|
f2cd6e07da83bb9167b5ddd0502c3163 | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24297347 | Sudan fuel protests: '50 shot dead' | Sudan fuel protests: '50 shot dead'
Security forces in Sudan have shot dead at least 50 people in days of protests over fuel subsidy cuts, human rights groups have said.
Police fired tear gas to disperse more protesters on Friday, witnesses have told the BBC.
Officials say fewer than 29 people have died, and they insist that the subsidy was unaffordable.
Protesters have accused President Omar al-Bashir's government of corruption and called on him to quit.
The African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies and Amnesty International say people have been killed by gun shots to the chest or head, citing witnesses, relatives, doctors and journalists.
A 14-year-old boy was said to be among the victims, who were mostly aged between 19 and 26, the groups said in a statement.
Hundreds had been detained, they added.
"Shooting to kill - including by aiming at protesters' chests and heads - is a blatant violation of the right to life, and Sudan must immediately end this violent repression by its security forces," said Lucy Freeman, Africa Deputy Director at Amnesty International.
Hospital sources have told the BBC that about 60 people have been killed.
Sudanese officials have not commented on the claims but Information Minister Ahmed Belal Osman said on Thursday that any death tolls higher than 29 were inaccurate.
BBC Arabic's Mohammad Osman in Khartoum says that around 500 people took to the streets of Jabra, an area in the southern part of Khartoum, chanting "peaceful, peaceful" to stress their non-violent nature.
Eyewitnesses have told the BBC that the security forces fired tear gas against the protestors and made several arrests.
Reuters news agency reports that trucks with mounted machine guns were parked at main roads and near large mosques across Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman ahead of Friday's protests.
Our reporter says internet is still available despite reports that access has been cut for the second time in a week.
The unrest began on Monday when the government lifted fuel subsidies to raise revenue. Austerity measures have recently escalated fuel prices, hitting people on low incomes.
The demonstrations began south of Khartoum and have now spread to the capital and other cities.
Sudan's economy has been in trouble since South Sudan ceded in 2011, taking with it 75% of the oil reserves that had fuelled an economic boom.
The Sudanese government reduced some fuel subsidies in July 2012, prompting several weeks of protests and a security crackdown.
Politicians, including President al-Bashir, have defended the austerity drive, saying the only alternative would be economic collapse, according to local media reports.
Despite efforts to mobilise opposition activists, Sudan has not seen a wave of anti-government unrest on the scale of that experienced in neighbouring Egypt or other countries in North Africa or the Middle East.
|
25fef759d20990c1df02b79cb4aece1b | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24727600 | Kenyan soldiers jailed for Westgate looting | Kenyan soldiers jailed for Westgate looting
Two Kenyan soldiers have been sacked and jailed for looting during last month's attack on the Westgate shopping centre, the army chief has said.
Julius Karangi told reporters that a third soldier was under investigation.
However, he denied there had been "widespread looting" and said there had been an attempt by the media to paint the soldiers as "unprofessional".
Somali Islamist group al-Shabab says it was behind the attack, which killed 67 people over four days.
CCTV footage leaked to local media seems to show soldiers helping themselves to goods in a supermarket in Westgate during the siege.
Gen Karangi has previously said that soldiers had only taken water because they were thirsty but on Tuesday, he said two soldiers had been sacked after being found with items such mobile phones and cameras stolen from the shopping centre.
Army spokesman Col Cyrus Oguna said a local commander had given the soldiers the go-ahead to take snacks from the supermarket.
Gen Karangi added: "There might have been poor judgement on the part of the commander, which is an issue we are dealing with."
Several shop-owners have said that their premises were looted during the siege.
Speaking at the same briefing Gen Karangi, Police Criminal Investigation Department head Ndegwa Muhoro said a phone call had been made to Norway during the siege.
One of the suspected attackers has been named as 23-year-old Somalia-born Norwegian national, Hassan Abdi Dhuhulow.
The Kenyan army has said that all four of the attackers died during the siege which began on 21 September.
Mr Muhoro said that Interpol was helping to analyse the bodies to confirm their identities, reports the AFP news agency.
Officials had initially said there were 10-15 attackers.
Mr Muhoro said that five other people were in detention over the attack and would be charged soon.
|
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