News Africa Extended

News Africa Extended

Boko Haram kill 7 police in Niger attack

Posted: 17 Jun 2016 12:02 PM PDT

Suspected Boko Haram militants attacked a village in Niger while a delegation of ministers were visiting, killing seven gendarmes.

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Niamey - Suspected Boko Haram militants attacked a village in Niger while a delegation of ministers were visiting, killing seven gendarmes and wounding 12 in a gun battle, the military said on Friday.

The attack happened on Thursday in a village in the region of Diffa that hosts refugees and internally displaced people who have been forced from their home by the Islamist insurgents, officials said. The ministers were unharmed.

Neighbouring Chad has sent troops to help Niger in a planned counterattack against Boko Haram after the militants seized the southern Niger town of Bosso in an attack that killed 26 soldiers.

Niger's government has called on former colonial power France, which already has 3 500 troops spread across five countries in West Africa, to strengthen military operations against the Nigeria-based Boko Haram and other militants.

Niger's defence minister, Hassoumi Messaoudou, told Radio France International on Friday that regional leaders needed to “rethink Boko Haram” and called on regional forces to defeat the group in Nigeria.

“We thought they were reduced to making suicide attacks,” he said. “Now they have rebuilt their military forces. We are dealing with an army.”

Reuters

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Boko Haram fatally shoot 18 at funeral

Posted: 17 Jun 2016 11:04 AM PDT

Boko Haram militants killed 18 women at a funeral in Nigeria's north-east, and some women are believed to be still missing, officials said.

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Yola, Nigeria - Boko Haram militants have shot dead 18 women at a funeral in Nigeria's north-east, rampaging through a village, setting houses on fire and shooting at random, witnesses and local government officials said on Friday.

The attack took place at about 5pm (16.00 GMT) on Thursday in the village of Kuda in Adamawa State.

Resident Moses Kwagh told Reuters that people waited until three hours after the attack and had then counted 18 women's bodies.

Some women were still missing, he said.

A police source confirmed the attack but said it was not yet clear how many people had been killed. The military did not respond to a request for comment.

State lawmaker Emmanuel Tsamdu told Reuters: “I am yet to get the details on how it happened and the real number of people killed. I have sent hunters to go to the area and get me the details because people are afraid to go to the village.”

Kuda is close to the Sambisa Forest, a vast colonial-era game reserve where Boko Haram militants hide in secluded camps to avoid the Nigerian military. The village was attacked by Boko Haram militants in February.

Under President Muhammadu Buhari's command and aided by Nigeria's neighbours, the army has recaptured most of the territory seized by Boko Haram, but the group still regularly stages guerrilla attacks.

“When we said that Boko Haram is still in this place some people sit in Abuja and claim that there is no more Boko Haram, but see what has happen,” Kwagh said.

Reuters

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EgyptAir crash: Second black box retrieved

Posted: 17 Jun 2016 05:13 AM PDT

A second flight recorder has been retrieved from the crashed EgyptAir flight MS804, investigators said.

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Cairo - A second flight recorder has been retrieved from the crashed EgyptAir flight MS804, containing data from aircraft systems which could shed light on what brought the plane down last month, Egyptian investigators said on Friday.

An Egyptian committee investigating the crash into the eastern Mediterranean Sea made the announcement a day after search teams found the cockpit voice recorder in a breakthrough for investigators seeking to explain what caused the plane to go down, killing all 66 people on board.

The Airbus A320 crashed early on May 19 on its way from Paris to Cairo. The two blackbox recorders are crucial to explaining what went wrong.

The Egyptian investigation committee said preparations were under way to transfer the two flight recorders to Alexandria where they will be received by an official from the general prosecutor's office and investigators.

No group has claimed responsibility for bringing down the plane, but investigation sources have said that it was too early to rule out any causes, including terrorism.

If intact, the cockpit recorder should reveal pilot conversations and any cockpit alarms, as well as other clues such as engine noise. But crash experts say it may provide only limited insight into what caused the crash, especially if the crew was confused or unable to diagnose any faults.

For that, the second black box containing data from the aircraft systems is needed.

The crash is the third blow since October to Egypt's travel industry, which is still suffering from the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule.

A Russian plane crashed in the Sinai Peninsula last October, killing all 224 people on board in an attack claimed by Islamic State. In March, an EgyptAir plane was hijacked by a man wearing a fake suicide belt. No one was hurt.

Reuters

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Kenya’s anal examinations ruled legal

Posted: 17 Jun 2016 12:59 AM PDT

Two men being prosecuted for having gay sex in Kenya lost their legal bid to challenge the authorities' right to force suspects to have anal examinations.

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Mombasa, Kenya - Two men being prosecuted for having gay sex in Kenya lost their legal bid on Thursday to challenge the authorities' right to force suspects to have anal examinations, in a ruling labelled “totally unacceptable” by Amnesty International.

The two unnamed men who deny the gay sex charges, said in their petition they had been coerced into undergoing anal examinations by security personnel and a public hospital in Mombasa in February 2015.

They wanted the court to declare that the forced examinations - which are used to try to prove gay sex has taken place - amounted to “degrading treatment” and a violation of human rights.

But high court judge Matthew Emukule said on Thursday there was sufficient justification under Kenyan law to allow the intrusion into the human body for the purpose of gathering evidence to prove a sexually related crime.

“The petition has no merit and is dismissed,” he said in his ruling in the Kenyan port of Mombasa.

Homosexual acts are illegal in Kenya and many other African countries. Rights groups have regularly condemned both those laws and the examinations.

Amnesty's regional director Muthoni Wanyeki said the court ruling was unacceptable and “also absurd as the government has no business proving or disproving consensual homosexual activity.”

New York-based Human Rights Watch has said the examinations might amount to torture under international law.

On a visit to Kenya in July last year US President Barack Obama equated discrimination against gays to treating people differently because of race, adding: “That's the path whereby freedoms begin to erode.”

The two men's trial for having gay sex is ongoing.

Reuters

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African nations celebrate Day of African Child

Posted: 17 Jun 2016 12:46 AM PDT

African nations must invest in services such as education that address the root causes of conflict and promote peace.

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Addis Ababa - African nations must invest in services such as education that address the root causes of conflict and promote peace, thereby reducing the risk for current and future generations relapsing into violence conflict and crisis.

This was a central theme that emerged during the Day of African Child that was celebrated all over Africa on Thursday.

In Ethiopia, it was held in Gambela Regional State with refugees from different countries living in camps joining in celebrations.

Ethiopia is the largest refugee-hosting country in Africa hosting close to 300 000 South Sudanese refugees, among which the majority are children.

Out of the total refugees and asylum seekers in Gambela, around 12 percent are living within the host communities and sharing all basic social services.

The theme for this year’s Day of the African Child was “Conflict and Crisis: Protecting Children’s Rights”, a theme Catherine Wanjiru Maina, senior social worker at the secretariat of the African committee of experts on the rights and welfare of the child (ACERWC) at the AU, says is a pertinent one.

“Conflict, fragility and insecurity are among the most significant development challenges of our time,” she told African News Agency (ANA) via phone from Gambela.

Globally more than 230 million children live in places fraught with conflict, fragility and instability and nearly 90 million children under the age of seven have spent their entire lives in conflict zones, UNICEF estimates.

The Day of the African Child has been celebrated every year since 1991, when it was first initiated by the Organisation of African Unity. It honours those who participated in the Soweto Uprisings in 1976 on that day. It also raises awareness of the continuing need for improvement of the education provided to African children.

In Soweto, South Africa, on June 16, 1976, thousands of black school children marched in a column more than half a mile long, protesting the poor quality of their education and demanding their right to be taught in their own language.

Hundreds of young students were shot, the most famous of which being Hector Pieterson who died that day.

More than a hundred people were killed in the protests that followed, while thousands were injured.

Last year, the ACERWC commissioned a continental study on the impact of armed conflict on children in Africa as part of its efforts to elevate its child protection agenda.

“Children living in conflict are often exposed to extreme trauma, putting them at risk of living in a state of toxic stress, a condition that inhibits brain cell connections with significant lifelong consequences to their cognitive, social and physical development,” Maina explained.

“Currently Africa has so much conflict and it is the children that suffer a lot. Childhood does not wait. They tell us their dream and their desire to go to school and have proper medical follow ups. Sadly we don’t know their future.”

Access to quality education can minimise inequalities or grievances among conflict affected communities and it can strengthen skills, attitudes and values that support peace, she added.

– African News Agency

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LRA rebels kidnap 17 in CAR

Posted: 17 Jun 2016 12:43 AM PDT

Lords Resistance Army rebels have kidnapped 17 people from a village in eastern Central African Republic, a senior local official said.

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Bangui - Lords Resistance Army rebels have kidnapped 17 people from a village in eastern Central African Republic, a senior local official said on Thursday.

The rebels are notorious for mutilating civilians and kidnapping children for use as fighters.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for the LRA's messianic leader, Joseph Kony, and other senior commanders.

The rebels struck on Monday, snatching three people in the morning and forcing them to carry their goods before releasing them in the evening, said Ghislain Kolengo, prefect of Haut Mbomou region.

“Very early (on Tuesday), they attacked Kadjema village and kidnapped 17 people who are still in captivity. I hope that our forces in the area and the Ugandans will find these people and bring them back,” Kolengo told Reuters.

The population then fled the town, he said.

The LRA is from northern Uganda but was driven out by a military offensive a decade ago. Today, its fighters roam a poorly policed area straddling the borders between Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

All three countries have faced their own conflicts and Uganda, another regional neighbour, said last week it planned to withdraw by the end of the year its troops involved in an operation to hunt down LRA rebels.

The LRA has been weakened but its fighters still attack civilians. It has abducted nearly 350 this year, according to the LRA Crisis Tracker, which documents rebel attacks.

Meanwhile, at least 11 were killed in clashes in the north of the country involving former rebel group called the Seleka, according to a brigade commander in the town of Ngaoudaye.

The first clash happened on Sunday and led to the deaths of seven Seleka members who were leading cattle through the town en route for Cameroon.

The former rebels took revenge, killing six civilians, said the commander, who declined to be named.

Central African Republic descended into chaos in March 2013 when the predominantly Muslim Seleka seized power, triggering reprisals by “anti-balaka” Christian militias who drove tens of thousands of Muslims from the south.

President Faustin-Archange Touadéra took office in March after elections aimed at drawing a line under the crisis.

Reuters

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