Africa - Page 57

Police in Kenya revealed the arrest Monday of a driver affiliated with the Somali outlet al-Shabaab in the case of the abduction of two Cuban slave doctors in a violent ambush on Friday.

Renegade general Khalifa Haftar’s assault on the capital of Libya, prompting thousands to flee their homes, may result in a deadly outbreak of several infectious diseases if it blocks aid workers from importing medicine and forces the displaced to consume dirty water, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Friday.

France, which owns oil assets in Libya, reportedly sidelined a European Union statement this week calling on the Paris and Moscow-backed Libyan strongman Gen. Khalifa Haftar to halt his eastern army’s offensive against forces loyal to the North African country’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli.

After months of increasingly large protests demanding an end to his three bloody decades of rule, the miitary deposed Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Thursday and placed under arrest. Revelers filled the streets in response to the news, but demonstrators said they will not relax until a civilian government takes over.

According to an Egyptian media report, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is considering his resignation as protesters emboldened by the ouster of the Algerian president grow more confident and the military begins intervening to protect demonstrators from Bashir’s security forces.

China’s state-run Global Times propaganda arm published an opinion piece condemning “the West” for the current instability in Libya on Tuesday, arguing that “the West couldn’t care less” about Tripoli and that Libya is “one of the biggest failures” of the Arab Spring.

Jihadists loyal to the Islamic State reportedly attacked a stronghold Tuesday under the control of Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar miles from Libya’s capital, Tripoli, where Haftar launched an invasion to overthrow the internationally-recognized government this week.

The U.S. military over the weekend announced that it had “temporarily” withdrawn a small contingent of American troops from Libya “due to increased unrest” in Tripoli fueled by ongoing battles between pro-internationally recognized government forces and an army loyal to a renegade warlord backed by Russia, France, and neighboring Egypt, among other countries.

An armed gang of four men ambushed a safari this week and reportedly kidnapped an American tourist and her local driver in Uganda’s popular Queen Elizabeth National Park, which borders the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Kenya’s Foreign Ministry has accused the United Nations of bribing the Islamic terrorist group al-Shabaab in exchange for allowing the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Somalia. 

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned on Tuesday after months of turmoil, street demonstrations demanding his ouster, and finally the military taking steps to force him out by questioning the sick and reclusive 82-year-old president’s fitness for office. The question of what comes next is on the minds of both international observers and Algerians, who continued demonstrating in the streets after Bouteflika’s announcement, demanding the rest of the corrupt political elite depart as well.

Russia is intensifying its military presence and influence in Africa by “increasing arms sales, security agreements, and training programs for unstable countries or autocratic leaders,” a move that is causing concern in the West, the New York Times confirms.

The prominent Vatican Cardinal Robert Sarah, as his newly released book is causing furor in Europe, said it is wrong to “use the word of God to promote migration.”

Pope Francis and Moroccan King Mohammed VI launched a joint appeal Saturday, urging the protection of the status quo of Jerusalem as the common patrimony of “the followers of the three monotheistic religions.”

Residents of the Somali capital of Mogadishu have experienced a wave of deadly suicide and car bomb attacks in recent days at the hands of the local al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab, which killed at least 30 people in about one week, starting on March 21.

A top leader of the North Africa-based al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), seeking to take advantage of protests against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s administration in Algeria, recently urged Muslims to “unite” to establish an Islamic emirate in the country, according to several reports.

Pope Francis told the people of Morocco he will visit them “as a pilgrim of peace and of fraternity” when he travels to the north African nation on Saturday.

Jeff King, president of International Christian Concern, said Islamists murdered 70,000 Christians in Nigeria over the last 20 years.

Pope Francis prayed publicly for the Christians massacred recently in Nigeria and Mali as the Vatican celebrated a day of remembrance for martyred missionaries Sunday.

Google has expressed its regret over a “minor glitch” that caused the value of the Ghanaian currency, the cedi, to drop significantly.

Boko Haram militants killed at least 23 Chadian soldiers on Thursday in what appears to be the latest deadly attack by the Islamic caliphate.

The United States military may have committed lethal “war crimes” against “numerous” civilians, including children, as it ramped up its airstrike campaign against the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab in Somalia under President Donald Trump’s watch, the human rights group Amnesty International claimed on Wednesday, echoing allegations by the terrorist group and some news outlets.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration pledged $500,000 in “rapid response non-lethal aid” to the United Nations-brokered Government of National Accord (GNA) in chaos-ridden Libya soon after the breakaway administration consolidated its control of two-thirds of the North African nation.

Boko Haram terrorists attacked a Christian-majority town in northeast Nigeria Monday night, leaving an unknown number of casualties and sending residents fleeing for the surrounding mountains.

Muslim Fulani militants killed nine more Christians in Nigeria’s Middle Belt over the weekend, the latest strike in a string of lethal, religiously motivated attacks.

Political leaders and public figures were falling over themselves this weekend to condemn the mosque attacks in New Zealand, while dozens of Christians were slaughtered by Muslims in Nigeria to the sound of crickets.

Sea-Eye, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) which ferried migrants to Europe, has claimed that despite a three-week search off the coast of Libya, they were unable to find a single migrant to “rescue” before returning to port in Mallorca.

The recent death toll of Christians in Nigeria has reached 120 with this week’s slaughter of more than 50 by Fulani Muslim militants in the Kaduna state of Nigeria, the Christian Post reported.

The crisis facing aviation giant Boeing intensified this week as 737 Max 8 aircraft were grounded around the world following the deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday. President Donald Trump issued an emergency order following suit on Wednesday afternoon as they were banned by almost every other country in the world.

French President Emmanuel Macron will be in Kenya today in the first visit by a French leader since the East African nation’s independence in 1963.

Spiralling knife, drugs, and gang crime in London has been leading many concerned Somali parents to send their teenage offspring, who grew up in Britain, away to Africa for their own safety.

Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the head of the breakaway government’s Libyan National Army (LNA), gained control of two-thirds of Libya – including most border crossings and the majority of onshore oil fields – after sweeping through the North African country’s southern region in recent weeks, the Guardian reported on Monday.

The U.S. military steadily ramped up airstrikes against the Somalian terrorist group al-Shabaab over the past year, shifting its focus away from the dying Islamic State to al-Qaeda’s most feral ally with relatively little media attention.

Medical teams frequently complain about the dangerous conditions in the violent rural areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). An alarming report published by Doctors Without Borders on Thursday said the effort to contain the Ebola outbreak in the Congo is “failing” due to community distrust and factional violence, including over 30 attacks on Ebola treatment centers over the past seven months.

Extremism in the Somali community of Minneapolis has long been a concern of American counterterrorism officials, as both the Islamic State and al-Qaeda’s ally al-Shabaab have been alarmingly successful at recruiting from the area.

The top American commander in Africa warned lawmakers on Thursday against the potential expansion of China’s military activities beyond its first overseas base in Djibouti and Russia’s deployment of mercenaries to the Central African Republic (CAR) and ongoing military support for Libyan strongman Gen. Khalifa Haftar who has been accused of war crimes.