At least 17 people have been killed and several others injured in Mozambique’s capital when a 15-meter pile of garbage collapsed due to heavy rain and buried seven houses, officials say.

The collapse happened at around 3 a.m. (0100 GMT) in the impoverished Hulene neighborhood, which is around 10 kilometers from the center of Maputo. The houses were built illegally and authorities had previously asked the residents to leave, officials said.

Torrential rain is thought to have caused the loose waste to shift and crash down on the shacks, trapping the occupants who were sleeping at the time of the incident on Sunday night.

Mozambique’s emergency service warned there could be more victims, trapped under the vast waste pile in Hulene.

“The information we received from local authorities is that the number of people living in those houses exceeds the number of deaths recorded, so work is still ongoing to see if there are any other deaths,” said spokesman Leonilde Pelembe.

The rubbish mound destroyed five homes and rescue teams were still searching through the wreckage to find survivors, he added.

“I live in this neighborhood because I have nowhere to go. Had the government told me to go to another place to live, I would have left here,” said local resident Maria Huo.

Her family home was partially destroyed and her son injured in the landslide, she said.

“It’s been more than 10 years that the dump should have been closed because it’s full — but they still continue to pile trash on the trash. The consequence is this,” said Teresa Mangue, a neighborhood leader.

Heavy rain has been falling on Maputo since Sunday, causing flooding, damaging homes and deluging roads and schools.

(Source: Agencies)

On February 2, more than two dozen Boko Haram fighters emerged from a hideout in Sambisa Forest and surrendered to authorities. Their defections were a key victory for Nigerian forces and regional allies in their battle against the diminished, but still deadly, terrorist group.

Maj. Gen. Rogers Nicholas of the Nigerian Army told VOA’s Hausa service that he believes there are more defections to come.

“Now they have repented. They surrendered voluntarily. They are now with us. We have provided them with clothes to wear, food to eat and drugs for their health,” said Nicholas, the theater commander for Operation Lafiya Dole, Nigeria’s effort to defeat Boko Haram.

“We will hand them over to the state government to decide what to do next. We are calling on those still hiding in the forest to come out and surrender. We will accept them and take care of them,” he said.

One of the defectors said he and the other fighters were struggling with a lack of food, water and medical supplies.

“We were just suffering in the bush. Thank God we were accepted by the authorities and provided for. I want to call on those still in the forest to come out and surrender with their weapons. Nothing would happen to them,” the fighter told VOA.

But lasting peace has been elusive in the fight against Boko Haram. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and top officials have declared the group defeated multiple times, only to see more attacks. The group killed more than 900 people in 2017, a slight increase from the previous year, according to BBC Monitoring. They remain among the most deadly terrorist groups on the continent.

Hit and run terrorists

Vincent Foucher, senior consultant for the International Crisis Group, recently returned from a research trip to northeast Nigeria and said the group is weakened but still dangerous.

“Boko Haram has basically gone rural,” he said, pointing to marshy areas in and around Lake Chad and mountainous areas along the border with Cameroon as the group’s strongholds. “They don’t seek anymore to control large chunks of territory. They just go for hit and run. They mix guerilla and terrorism basically. And they are still there.”

Foucher said life inside Maiduguri, the largest city in Borno State, has mostly returned to normal, with busy commerce and significant activity by nongovernmental organizations. Other cities in the northeast have been turned into garrison towns with trenches dug around them for protection, he said.

“The military are, you know, a bit more corrosive — are sort of trying to push people to flock to those towns to sort of control what’s going on. This is classical counterinsurgency policy,” said Foucher. “You want to take the water away from the fish, as the saying goes.”

Foucher said the Nigerian Army has made some advances in counterinsurgency through its specially trained mobile strike teams and via air strikes. He said he also is heartened to see the Nigerian Army taking claims of abuse or human rights violations seriously, and in some cases, issuing court-martials to those suspected of crimes.

Regional cooperation

Perhaps most significantly, the Multinational Joint Task Force has made gains. The 10,000-person force is headquartered in N’Djamena, Chad, with regional bases in the four countries surrounding Lake Chad. In addition to the affected nations of Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon, Benin also contributes troops to the effort.

The task force marks a major step forward in regional military cooperation, Foucher said, with bilateral missions, intelligence sharing and countries granting permission for neighboring forces to cross borders in pursuit of Boko Haram fighters.

“It’s not perfect, but the level of cooperation, actually, between the four countries, whether in the framework of MNJTF or whether actually outside — there are also some bilateral links that are working, and it is actually quite remarkable,” he said.

The task force embodies the ideal of “African solutions to African problems,” an often-cited approach to tackling military, political and societal issues without relying too heavily on Western support.

“I think, for once, an African regional security mechanism that is building, you know, that is not just a mimicry of what Europe has been trying to do,” Foucher said. “It is really based on a need that states feel for some sort of coordination, so it’s an interesting thing.”

Source: VOA

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn suddenly resigned on Thursday in what he described as a bid to smooth reforms, following years of violent unrest that threatened the ruling party’s hold on Africa’s second most populous nation.

The resignation — unprecedented in Ethiopia’s history — followed a wave of strikes this week in towns near the capital and demonstrations successfully demanding the release of more opposition leaders.

More than 6,000 political prisoners have been freed since January as the government struggles to placate simmering anger among the two largest ethnic groups, the Oromo and Amharic, who complain they are under-represented in the country’s corridors of power.

The prime minister leads the nation under Ethiopia’s political system, and Hailemariam’s resignation underscores the depth of division within the ruling coalition over how fast to pursue political reform.

Ethiopia is the region’s largest economy and a key Western ally in the fight against militancy but rights groups criticize its government for jailing journalists and political opponents.

It was not clear who would replace Hailemariam. He also resigned as chairman of the ruling coalition, which has governed since it defeated a military regime in 1991.

“Unrest and a political crisis have led to the loss of lives and displacement of many,” Hailemariam said in a televised speech. “I see my resignation as vital in the bid to carry out reforms that would lead to sustainable peace and democracy.”

(Source: Reuters)

Source: Channel Africa

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has died after a long battle with cancer.

His death casts his Movement for Democratic Change party into the unknown, less than three months after the army ousted long-time ruler Robert Mugabe.

Mr Tsvangirai, who died in South Africa, was 65.

“I can confirm that he died this evening. The family communicated this to me,” MDC vice-president Elias Mudzuri told Reuters.

Arguably Zimbabwe’s most popular politician, the mining union leader’s career was ultimately defined by his tussles – both literal and figurative – with Mr Mugabe, who resigned after a de facto coup in December.

Elections are due within the next six months and Mr Tsvangirai’s illness and now death leaves his party in disarray, to the advantage of the ruling ZANU-PF party.

ZANU-PF is now led by 93-year-old Mr Mugabe’s former deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Although Mr Tsvangirai suffered serious physical abuse at the hands of security forces, including serious head injuries in police custody in 2007, he went on to form an uneasy working relationship with Mr Mugabe in a 2009-2013 coalition government.

Source: RTE

Three soldiers and two civilians were killed and 11 other people injured in an accident involving DR Congo President Joseph Kabila’s motorcade, his office said Wednesday.

The accident happened on a road in the southwest of the country, 220 kilometers (110 miles) south of Kinshasa, as Kabila was returning to the capital on Tuesday.

“Last night, a vehicle in the presidential motorcade was hit on the Matadi highway at Kimpese by a truck carrying cement,” communications official Yvon Ramazani told AFP on Wednesday.

“Three soldiers in the Republican Guard were killed along with two civilians who were nearby,” he said. Seven soldiers and four civilians were also injured, Ramazani said, adding that the accident had been caused by heavy rain.

Kabila “stayed on the site until the emergency services arrived, and personally supervised the ambulance evacuation of dead and injured,” he said.

The Republic Guard is an elite force tasked with the protection of the president. Kabila was returning from a stay in the sea port of Matadi.

Roads in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a sprawling, poverty-stricken country, are notorious for accidents. Poor road surfaces, overladen vehicles and excessive speed are often the causes of mishaps.

Kabila on Wednesday was to meet in Kinshasa with the presidents of the neighboring Republic of Congo and Angola, Denis Sassou Nguesso and Joao Lourenco, for a tripartite meeting.

(Source: AFP)

Poachers killed six troops and two guides in a wildlife park in northern Cameroon, Defence Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said Monday.

“Six members of the defence forces and two civilian guides were killed ” on Thursday during a clash with heavily-armed men on horseback in Bouba Ndjida national park in the north of the country, Beti Assomo said in a statement aired on state radio.

In 2012, 128 elephants were killed in the Bouba Ndjida park within two months, according to the government. The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) put the figure at 480.

The WWF attributed that massacre to poachers from Sudan and Chad.

Since March 2012, Cameroon has deployed a hundred troops in the wildlife reserve to help deal with the threat from poachers and protect the elephant population for which the park is known.

The eight people killed in Thursday´s violence were carrying out a routine patrol, source said.

Poaching has killed an estimated 110,000 elephants over the last decade, with transnational organised crime syndicates taking over the illicit trade.

The most recent figures, for 2016, showed the global trade in illegal ivory continues to thrive in light of record seizures despite a decline in poaching.

According to the Great Elephant Census in 2016, the first ever pan-African survey of savanna elephants, numbers are estimated to have fallen to 352,000, down from 1.3 million in 1979.

Source: The News.com

Three French Cameroun gendarmes have been killed in Kembong village in Eyumojock Sub constituency in Manyu today Sunday the 11^th of February 2018. The three were killed as the Francophone dominated army was conducting operations following reports of “imminent attacks” by the Ambazonian Defense Force.

The so called Cameroon military spokesman Colonel Didier Badjeck confirmed the news earlier today and stated that the perpetrators of the crimes have already been arrested. On Friday, an internal memo from the Cameroon Ministry of Defense reported threats of “imminent attacks” by the Ambazonian Defense Force against “several cities” in Southern Cameroons. A curfew has been introduced in the territory.

Since the beginning of the Ambazonian crisis, the Biya regime has reported that only 26 members of the security forces have been killed by suspected separatists. However, no record of the number of civilian deaths has been established from an official source since the beginning of the crisis. Nearly 40,000 Southern Cameroonians, mostly villagers have fled to Nigeria.

By Rita Akana

Cameroon imposed a week-long night curfew from Saturday in its restive English-speaking west citing fears of an “imminent” attack by separatists but long-serving President Paul Biya claimed the volatile situation had “stabilised”.

Dozens of people have been killed in the two English-speaking regions since October after a violent crackdown on protests against the mainly French-speaking government.

Many English-speakers have accused the Francophone majority of discrimination and that has fuelled a separatist movement.

Army spokesman Colonel Didier Badjeck said the curfew would come into force Saturday. It will last from 8:00 pm to 6:00 am and is due to concerns of an “imminent attack” in “several cities” by separatists, backed by “mercenaries” from neighbouring Nigeria, a defence ministry memo said.

The curfew can be renewed, said a note from the governorate of the English-speaking north-west region, seen by AFP.

Cameroon’s southwest and northwest regions are home to an English-speaking minority that accounts for about a fifth of the population.

In October, separatists declared the two regions as the self-proclaimed republic of “Ambazonia”, prompting a forceful reaction by the government.

Police say 22 police and soldiers have been killed in the violence but officials in the capital Yaounde have not released figures for the number of separatist or civilian losses.

The spiralling violence has prompted an estimated 30,000 Cameroonians to flee to neighbouring Nigeria.

Biya, 84, who has held power since 1982, on Saturday called on young Cameroonians to be “patriotic internet users” and said the situation in the Anglophone areas had improved after “troubles which sometimes sparked acts of violence.”

It comes after a string of grisly video clips circulated online alleging atrocities against separatists by Cameroonian soldiers.

On Friday, the Cameroonian army denied its troops were responsible for the alleged gruesome killings in English-speaking regions in the unverified video.

“These accusations of atrocities are dreamt up. We are victims of disinformation and fake news,” said army spokesman Colonel Didier Badjeck.

(AFP)