Crowds took to the streets in Kashmir on Thursday, as the army said it had removed President Omar al-Bashir from power after 30 years in charge. We take a look at the best images from the capital, Khartoum
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Europe split over how to respond to Haftar assault on Tripoli
France blocked draft EU resolution condemning warlord and calling for his retreat from Libyan capital
European divisions over how to respond to General Khalifa Haftar’s violent assault on the Libyan capital, Tripoli, have been exposed after France blocked a draft EU resolution that would have condemned him and called for him to retreat.
France, a supporter of the warlord over the past two years, blocked the draft despite new UN figures showing 56 reported dead, hundreds injured and more than 6,000 displaced by the fighting.
Continue reading...Zambians can pursue mining pollution claim in English courts
Villagers say mine run by subsidiary of UK-based firm has caused illness and deaths
Two thousand Zambian villagers who say their lives have been ruined by toxic runoff from the world’s second-largest opencast mine have won the right to pursue a claim through the English courts.
In a landmark judgment, the supreme court ruled that the mining conglomerate Vedanta Resources, which is based in London, and its Zambian subsidiary Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) can be held to account by English judges, despite the companies’ arguments that they should defend themselves in Zambia.
Continue reading...Poorest countries bear the brunt as aid levels fall for second successive year
Experts warn of ‘step backwards’ in fight against global poverty as latest figures show 3% drop in aid to most vulnerable states
Experts have warned that the fight against global poverty has taken a backward step after the publication of new figures showing foreign aid has fallen for a second successive year.
Aid levels dropped last year by 2.7% from 2017, with the poorest countries worst hit, according to figures published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Continue reading...‘I was raised to love our home’: Sudan’s singing protester speaks out
Alaa Salah, 22, talks to the Guardian about having her image seen around the world
The young woman in a photo that has come to symbolise the protest movement in Sudan has been identified as Alaa Salah, a 22-year-old architecture student in Khartoum.
Salah told the Guardian she was happy that the image, taken on Monday evening at a demonstration in the Sudanese capital, had been viewed so widely.
Continue reading...Uproar in Algeria as ally of former president named new leader
Appointment of regime stalwart is met with opposition boycott and fresh protests
Algerian lawmakers have appointed a regime stalwart as the country’s first new president in two decades, to the dismay of protesters seeking sweeping change after the resignation of Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
The appointment of Abdelkader Bensalah, the speaker of the upper house, as interim president follows constitutional rules but goes against the demands of demonstrators, who are pushing for him and other veteran politicians to stand down.
Continue reading...Libya crisis: UK officials anxious as blame is laid at doors of Gulf allies
There will be deep unease in Foreign Office over role of Saudi Arabia and UAE
Blame for the renewed Libyan crisis has been laid at the doors of some of Britain’s closest allies in the Gulf, highlighting again how the UK’s commercial interests so often trump its political priorities in the Middle East.
In exchanges in the UK parliament, the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, traced the crisis to Nato’s overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, an intervention described even by the government minister Mark Field as “calamitous”. She also accused France of supporting Khalifa Haftar’s attack on Tripoli, an accusation that the Élysée Palace strenuously denies. Other MPs blamed Russian meddling.
Continue reading...Sudan protesters resist attacks by armed militias
Witnesses in Khartoum describe attacks by militia using teargas and firing live ammunition
Thousands of protesters camped in the centre of Khartoum appear to have defied a fresh attempt to clear them by armed militia loyal to the Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Civil society groups run by medics reported two dead and many wounded, some critically, in renewed violence in the capital on Tuesday morning. Other groups put the toll as high as five dead, including at least one soldier, and more than a hundred hurt.
Continue reading...‘You often get sick’: the deadly toll of illegal gold mining in South Africa | Christopher Clark
Driven by need, tens of thousands of women are risking death, disease and sexual violence to scrape a living in the country’s informal mining sector
On the outskirts of Durban Deep, an abandoned mining town with a labyrinth of underground tunnels long since abandoned by the big gold companies, Elizabeth goes rhythmically about her work.
Grinding piles of rough stones into white, gold-flecked silt on a large concrete slab, the 40-year-old is one of the ghostly dust-covered zama zamas – artisanal miners, mostly illegal – who have turned to scavenging in disused gold and diamond mines across South Africa.
Continue reading...Libyan crisis escalates as warplane strikes Tripoli airport
Passengers reported to have been seen leaving terminal after strike by pro-Haftar forces
A warplane has attacked the only functioning airport in Tripoli as fighting between forces loyal to the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar and rival militias escalated and EU foreign ministers met in Brussels to try to de-escalate the violence.
Mitiga airport, in an eastern suburb of the capital, was closed after it was hit in an airstrike by pro-Haftar forces. Passengers could be seen leaving the terminal, a Reuters correspondent at the airport said. Fighting was also under way at Tripoli’s international airport, 15 miles from the city centre, which has not been functioning since fighting destroyed much of it in 2014.
Continue reading...‘We’re frightened’: Tripoli braces as fighting reaches suburbs
Violence at edge of capital contrasts with tense calm in city centre as Libyans fear bloodbath
Residents of Tripoli have spoken of their fear and confusion as clashes between UN-backed government forces and troops loyal to the Benghazi strongman Khalifa Haftar continue in its southern suburbs.
“We are sandwiched between the forces, people are wondering what to do, we are frightened,” said one woman, who asked to remain anonymous, living with her family in the southern suburbs.
Continue reading...Sudan: gunfire heard at peaceful protest in Khartoum – video
Sudanese security forces have used teargas in an attempt to disperse protesters in central Khartoum. The demonstrators have been camped for more than two days as they call for the president, Omar al-Bashir, to resign. Protests began in December 2018 after the government raised bread prices, but they have since evolved into nationwide unrest against Bashir's rule.
Continue reading...What does the battle for Tripoli mean for Libya and the region?
Khalifa Haftar is leading an advance on the capital, with far-ranging consequences
Libya is on the brink of an all-out civil war that will upend years of diplomatic efforts to reconcile two rival armed political factions. An advance led by Khalifa Haftar, the warlord from the east of the country, has diplomats scrambling and the UN appealing in vain for a truce. The French government, the European power closest to Haftar, insists it had no prior warning of his assault, which is now less than 20km from the capital, Tripoli. The outcome could shape not just the politics of Libya, but also the security of the Mediterranean, and the relevance of democracy across the Middle East and north Africa.
Continue reading...Demolition derby: the human cost of Addis Ababa’s rapid growth
Residents of the Ethiopian capital’s historic Piassa neighbourhood have just had their homes bulldozed a second time
“I used to have a small grocery shop right here,” said Selhadin Sulman, spreading his arms wide as he remembered the 25 sq m kebele building that was his home until the police arrived in 2014 and started dismantling it as he slept. He was woken by his neighbours screaming and pleading with them to stop.
Sulman had lived in Wube Berha, part of Addis Ababa’s Piassa historic district, for more than 50 years. Kebele houses were a form of public rental housing built in the 1970s from cheap materials for the Ethiopian capital’s growing number of urban poor.
Continue reading...Rhino poacher killed by an elephant and then ‘devoured’ by lions
Police say the man entered the park with a group intending to shoot and kill rhinos
A rhino poacher is believed to have been attacked by an elephant and then eaten by a pride of lions during an incident in South Africa’s Kruger national park.
Police brigadier Leonard Hlathi said police received information that a group of men had gone into the park on 1 April in order to hunt rhino, “when suddenly an elephant attacked and killed one of them”.
Continue reading...Battle for Tripoli escalates as fighting nears Libyan capital
Fighting rages between UN-backed Tripoli government and self-styled Libyan National Army
The battle for Tripoli escalated on Sunday as a military assault on the city by the eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar led to 21 deaths and nearly 90 injuries, and international calls for calm were ignored.
As the fighting neared the capital, the UN issued a plea for a temporary ceasefire to allow the wounded to be evacuated. Hours earlier, the US announced it was withdrawing some of its troops from the country, citing deteriorating “security conditions on the ground”. India also withdrew a group of its peacekeepers, saying the situation in Libya had suddenly worsened.
Continue reading...Man who fled to UK as child has deportation to DRC halted
Habib Bazaboko is returned to removal centre instead of boarding a flight at Heathrow in apparent U-turn by Home Office
A man who has lived in the UK since childhood and was due to be deported on Saturday on a 6.55pm flight to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world, has been given an eleventh-hour stay of execution.
Habib Bazaboko, a stonemason, fled to the UK at the age of 11 after his father was murdered in his home country. He has previous convictions, including for grievous bodily harm, but has not committed any crime for nine years.
Continue reading...As the credits roll on Algeria’s dictator, a timely reminder of why history must not be repeated
The screening of a 1966 film about their country’s bitter colonial conflict has seen Algerians unite in peaceful protest
More than half a century since it was released – and promptly banned by French authorities – The Battle of Algiers, depicting the bloody struggle for Algeria’s independence from France in 1962, still has the power to shock.
On Friday night, the black-and-white, 1966 film relating Algerian anti-colonial guerrilla warfare and its brutal repression by the French military was screened in Paris. London-based musical activists Asian Dub Foundation (ADF) performed a live soundtrack.
Continue reading...Haftar’s advance leaves UN’s hopes for Libya settlement in tatters
Critics say policy of appeasement towards strongman has left country at risk of military rule
After more than half a century in and around Libyan politics, and at the age of 75, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar stands poised at the gates of Tripoli, as close to imposing a form of military rule across the country than at any time in his mercurial and often violent career.
It may yet be that his grandly titled Libyan National Army – a misnomer for a band of ideologically incoherent militias – will discover that it has overstretched itself, and his advance will be repelled. In a similar, less planned a ttempt by Haftar to seize power in 2014, he only partially succeeded, by taking control of Benghazi, the main town in the east of the country.
Continue reading...Mummified mice found in ‘beautiful, colourful’ Egyptian tomb
Recently discovered tomb of official dating back more than 2,000 years contains dozens of animals and two mummies
Dozens of mummified mice were among the animals found in an ancient Egyptian tomb that was unveiled on Friday.
The well-preserved and finely painted tomb near the Egyptian town of Sohag – a desert area near the Nile about 390km (242 miles) south of Cairo – is thought to be from the early Ptolemaic period, dating back more than 2,000 years.
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