Category Archives: Africa

Uproar in Algeria as ally of former president named new leader

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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.

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Libya crisis: UK officials anxious as blame is laid at doors of Gulf allies

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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.

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Sudan protesters resist attacks by armed militias

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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.

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‘You often get sick’: the deadly toll of illegal gold mining in South Africa | Christopher Clark

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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.

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Libyan crisis escalates as warplane strikes Tripoli airport

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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.

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‘We’re frightened’: Tripoli braces as fighting reaches suburbs

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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.

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Sudan: gunfire heard at peaceful protest in Khartoum – video

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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. 

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What does the battle for Tripoli mean for Libya and the region?

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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.

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Demolition derby: the human cost of Addis Ababa’s rapid growth

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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.

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Rhino poacher killed by an elephant and then ‘devoured’ by lions

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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”.

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Battle for Tripoli escalates as fighting nears Libyan capital

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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.

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Man who fled to UK as child has deportation to DRC halted

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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.

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As the credits roll on Algeria’s dictator, a timely reminder of why history must not be repeated

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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.

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Haftar’s advance leaves UN’s hopes for Libya settlement in tatters

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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.

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Mummified mice found in ‘beautiful, colourful’ Egyptian tomb

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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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Fears of Libyan civil war as militias capture 145 Haftar troops

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Action escalates fight between western government-allied militias and Libyan National Army

Fears were mounting of renewed civil war in Libya after militias allied to the government in Tripoli captured scores of troops from a powerful rival force, and the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned he was ending a visit to the country “with a heavy heart and deeply concerned”.

Guterres suggested a key meeting with eastern commander, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, had not resulted in assurances from the strongman leader to avoid an escalation of tensions.

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Macron asks experts to investigate French role in Rwandan genocide

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Accusations of complicity in deaths of 800,000 in 1994 have clouded diplomatic relations

Emmanuel Macron has appointed a commission of historians and researchers to investigate France’s role in the Rwandan genocide 25 years ago, as accusations of complicity in the deaths of an estimated 800,000 people continue to cloud diplomatic relations between Kigali and Paris.

The French president said the panel of experts would look at state archives, including diplomatic and military documents, and produce a public report. The move was announced after Macron met representatives of a Rwandan genocide survivors’ association at the Élysée – the first time a French leader has held such a meeting.

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Libyan strongman orders troops to march on Tripoli

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Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar says forces’ move will ‘shake the lands under the feet of the unjust bunch’

The strongman who controls two thirds of Libya has ordered his forces to march to Tripoli, the capital of the UN-backed government, raising fears of a major showdown with rival militias.

Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who commands the “Libya National Army” (LNA) based in the east, described his forces’ move as a “victorious march” to “shake the lands under the feet of the unjust bunch”.

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Boeing report: pilots followed guidance but could not control Ethiopian plane

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Investigators say pilots were unable to prevent plane’s nose from pointing down

The pilots of the Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max that crashed last month killing 157 people correctly followed Boeing’s emergency instructions but were still unable to stop the plane’s nose repeatedly pointing down, investigators said.

In the final seconds before the crash, pilots tried desperately to right the plane by switching its anti-stall software on and off but to no avail. The jet hit an airspeed of 500 knots (575mph), well above its operational limits, before cockpit data recordings stopped.

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Uganda: US tourist kidnapped and held for $500,000 ransom

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Security forces are hunting gunmen who abducted a 35-year-old woman and her driver inside a national park close to the border

Ugandan security forces are hunting gunmen who abducted an American tourist and her driver inside a national park close to the border with Democratic Republic of Congo.

Four kidnappers stopped a group of tourists at gunpoint around dusk on Tuesday as they drove through the Queen Elizabeth national park to see wild animals.

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