Rescue ship Ocean Viking has saved more than 600 migrants adrift in the Mediterranean over the last two days, the organisation that runs it, SOS Mediterranee, said on Friday.

The rescues took place southwest of Lampedusa, in the waters between the Italian island and Tunisia, the organisation said.

An earlier statement referred to more than 500 people rescued in 11 separate rescue operations.

But a spokeswoman for SOS Mediterranee told AFP Friday evening: “So far, we have rescued 623 migrants since Thursday morning in 15 rescues.”

Among those rescued were 146 unaccompanied minors, five accompanied minors, and two pregnant women, said the organisation, which is based in Marseille, on the French Mediterranean.

Some of those rescued were to be taken to Lampedusa and others to the port of Civitavecchia, northwest of Rome, the group added.

Most of those rescued were from Sudan, which has been caught up in a war between rival generals for the past four months. Others were from Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Benin and Bangladesh.

The Ocean Viking crew were helped on board the vessel by teams from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), said the earlier SOS Mediterranee statement.

The vessel was alerted Thursday by the Italian emergency services and given the coordinates of vessels in distress southwest of Lampedusa, the NGO said.

The central Mediterranean Sea is the most perilous maritime crossing in the world for the migrants.

At least 1,848 people have died so far this year attempting the Central Mediterranean route from North Africa to Italy and Malta, according to the United Nations migration agency, the International Organization for Migration.

That is significantly higher than its figure for the whole of 2022, which was 1,417.

In June, one sinking alone in the western Mediterranean cost the lives of at least 82 people, one of the deadliest incidents involving migrants in the area.

In July, the Italian authorities detained the Ocean Viking for 10 days at Civitavecchia, after questioning the vessel’s safety standards before finally releasing it.

Source: AFP

The expiration of the deadline set by ECOWAS for Niger’s junta to return power to the country’s ousted president has clarified the intentions of the country’s new military leadership.

Instead of entering negotiations for a power transfer, the junta aren’t talking to anyone, they are just staying there and bracing for whatever’s going to happen.

France 24‘s Niger expert says ECOWAS are now playing a “dangerous game”. The organisation, which threatened military intervention if its terms were not met, has given no further details of how it plans respond to the expired deadline.

“It’s all about credibility,” he said. “The question is, what do you put on the table to force a junta to step down?”

Elsewhere, President Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast recently met with his chief of staff. He was very clear with president Alassane that Ivorian soldiers will not be able intervene in NIGER

Source: France 24 and Cameroon Concord News

Sudanese authorities loyal to the regular army have declared UN envoy Volker Perthes “persona non grata”, accusing him of taking sides in nearly two months of devastating fighting with rival paramilitaries.

Fighting has raged in the north African country since mid-April, when army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, turned on each other.

In a letter to the United Nations last month, Burhan accused the envoy of bias, not respecting “national sovereignty” and exacerbating fighting between the regular army and the RSF.

UN chief Antonio Guterres has repeatedly defended Perthes.

“The government of the Republic of Sudan has notified the secretary-general of the United Nations that it has declared Mr. Volker Perthes… persona non grata as of today,” the foreign ministry said in a statement late Thursday.

A Sudanese government official who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity said the decision was taken “because he sided with certain political parties and stressed that the political process be restricted to certain parties and exclude others”.

“When the head of the sovereign council (Burhan) wrote to the UN secretary-general asking for him to be replaced, and he did not respond, the Sudanese government had no choice but to take this decision,” the official added.

The United Nations has yet to comment on the announcement. It noted in a tweet on Thursday that Perthes was in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for a series of talks.

Fresh fighting

Sudan has been embroiled in deadly conflict since April 15, with fighting spreading across the country from Khartoum to the western region of Darfur in defiance of a series of truces.

Witnesses reported hearing clashes on Friday near the Yarmouk weapons manufacturing and arms depot complex in Khartoum, from where plumes of smoke were seen rising for a second successive day.

Air strikes were also carried out in eastern parts of the capital and the sound of anti-aircraft guns was heard.

Since the fighting erupted, more than 1,800 people have been killed, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. The UN says nearly two million people have been displaced, including 476,000 who have sought refuge in neighbouring countries.

Those unable to leave have been forced to camp out for weeks as supplies of food and other vital goods run low.

Entire districts of Khartoum no longer have running water, mains electricity is only available for a few hours a week and three-quarters of the hospitals in combat zones are not functioning.

The most recent truce was agreed to allow desperately needed humanitarian aid into areas ravaged by the fighting, but like all those that preceded it, the accord was flouted by both sides.

The UN estimates around 25 million people — more than half of Sudan’s population — are now in need of aid.

Blame trading

Perthes and the UN mission he heads have been targeted since late last year by military and Islamist-backed protests denouncing perceived foreign interference.

A former academic who has headed the Sudan mission since 2021, Perthes has staunchly defended the UN against accusations of inflaming the conflict, saying those responsible are “the two generals at war”.

In his letter to the UN chief, Burhan charged that Perthes had presented a misleading picture “of consensus” in his reports to the UN, and “without these signs of encouragement, the rebel leader Daglo would not have launched his military operations”.

It has never been possible to verify who fired the first shots of the war.

Daglo, an ambitious militia leader originally armed by Bashir to crush rebels in Darfur, was Burhan’s second-in-command before the two fell out, most recently over the RSF’s integration into the army.

Source:  AFP

More than a million people have been displaced by fighting in Sudan so far, including a quarter of a million refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson says.

The latest figure includes some 843,000 people displaced internally and around 250,000 people who have fled across Sudan’s borders, Matthew Saltmarsh told a Geneva briefing on Friday.

With hundreds of casualties and the streets of the capital Khartoum being turned into battle zones, the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been engaged in weeks-long conflict.

Refugees have flocked to the neighboring countries of Sudan, including Chad, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, all of which are experiencing severe humanitarian crises.

Since the start of the conflict, Egypt has received the largest amount of Sudanese refugees than any other country, around 110,000, according to Saltmarsh.

“Many of those who have approached us are in a distressed state having been exposed to violence or traumatic conditions in Sudan, and having suffered arduous journeys,” Saltmarsh said. The pace has increased in recent weeks, he added, with some 5,000 arriving each day in Egypt.

Thousands of people have been injured and hundreds of people have died as a result of the fighting in the northeast African country so far.

Source: Presstv

Three people died during clashes between Senegalese police and supporters of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, the authorities said on Tuesday, amid flaring tensions triggered by a legal showdown.

Two young people were found dead overnight in the capital Dakar and southern city of Ziguinchor, where a policeman died on Monday after being accidentally crushed by an armoured anti-riot vehicle, the interior ministry said.

Crowds in Ziguinchor, where Sonko is mayor, on Monday hurled stones at police who responded with tear gas, according to an AFP correspondent there.

In Dakar, around 20 vehicles at a depot belonging to the national bus company were torched, and the local press said two stores belonging to the French supermarket chain Auchan, which has been frequently targeted in disturbances, were also attacked.

The violence erupted on the eve of a scheduled court appearance by Sonko, who is facing trial for the alleged rape of an employee at a beauty salon where he went for a massage.

Young demonstrators in Ziguinchor on Tuesday blocked off the streets leading to his home, some of them holding rocks or wielding steel bars, to prevent the authorities from taking him.

Sonko’s trial opened meanwhile in Dakar, more than 400 kilometres (250 miles) to the north, and was immediately adjourned until May 23 after he failed to show.

His accuser Adji Sarr, a woman in her twenties, and Sonko’s co-accused, Ndeye Khady Ndiaye, who owns the massage parlour where the alleged rape took place, were both present.

“I feel fine. I have confidence. We are going to win. It’s a pity that after waiting two years for a trial, he (Sonko) has fled,” Sarr said, speaking before proceedings opened.

Sonko, 48, who was also recently sentenced to a six-month suspended prison sentence for defamation and insults against the tourism minister, has denied the charge.

Sonko, president of the PASTEF-Patriots party, came in third in the 2019 presidential elections.

He says the legal cases against him are a plot aimed at barring him from contesting the 2024 vote.

Senegal is traditionally a beacon of stability in troubled West Africa, but in recent years has been buffeted by turbulence that has at times turned deadly.

When Sonko was arrested in 2021, several days of protests left at least 12 people dead.

The interior ministry on Tuesday did not directly attribute the latest death of the two young people to the protests, but said it “strongly urges parents to prevent their children from taking part in violent demonstrations.”

These events are liable to “attacks, theft, looting and other acts of vandalism,” it said.

Source: AFP

The fighting in Sudan has caused more than 330,000 people to flee their homes within the country, with over 100,000 others escaping over the borders, the United Nations said Tuesday, as gunfire and explosions echoed across the capital despite another ceasefire deal.

The conflict risks morphing into a broader disaster as Sudan’s impoverished neighbours deal with a refugee crunch and fighting hampers aid deliveries in a nation where two-thirds of people already rely on some outside assistance.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi said Cairo would provide support for dialogue in Sudan between the rival military factions, but was also “being careful about not interfering in their domestic matters”.

“The entire region could be affected,” he warned in an interview with a Japanese newspaper on Tuesday as an envoy from Sudan’s army chief, who leads one of the warring sides, met Egyptian officials in Cairo.

United Nations officials had said UN aid chief Martin Griffiths aimed to visit Sudan on Tuesday, but the timing was still to be confirmed.

Regional powers have been urging the two Sudanese warning generals, Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan and RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, to end hostilities and begin negotiations.

The two factions on Tuesday agreed in principle to a seven-day ceasefire from Thursday, South Sudan announced as more air strikes and shooting in the Khartoum region disrupted the latest short-term truce.

A statement released by the foreign ministry of South Sudan, which has offered to mediate in the conflict, said its President Salva Kiir stressed the importance of a longer truce and of naming envoys to peace talks, to which both sides had agreed.

The credibility of the reported May 4-11 deal ceasefire deal between the two warring factions was unclear, given the rampant violations that undermined previous agreements running from 24 to 72 hours.

Risk of a regional crisis

The UN’s World Food Programme said on Monday it was resuming work in the safer parts of the country after a pause earlier in the conflict, in which some WFP staff were killed.

“The risk is that this is not just going to be a Sudan crisis, it’s going to be a regional crisis,” said Michael Dunford, the WFP’s East Africa director.

The commanders of the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) who previously shared power as part of an internationally backed transition towards free elections and civilian government show no sign of backing down, yet neither seem able to secure a quick victory. That has raised the spectre of a prolonged conflict that could draw in outside powers.

Early on Tuesday, black smoke could be seen hanging over the capital Khartoum, which lies at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers. Air strikes hit Bahri, on the east bank, while clashes flared in Omdurman to the west, witnesses said.

Hundreds of people have died in the fighting between Burhan and Hemedti, who have blamed each other for the ceasefire violations.

The army has used airpower against RSF units dug into residential areas of Khartoum, damaging swathes of the capital area and reigniting conflict in Sudan’s far west Darfur region.

Port Sudan, where thousands of people have fled Khartoum seeking evacuation abroad, is the main entry point for aid for many countries in the region, the WFP’s Dunford told Reuters.

“Unless we stop the fighting, unless we stop now, the impact on a humanitarian scale is going to be massive,” he said.

Kenya has offered the use of its airports and airstrips near the border with South Sudan as part of an international humanitarian effort, Kenyan Foreign Minister Alfred Mutua said.

Aid supplies

Aid supplies that have arrived in Port Sudan for other aid agencies were still awaiting safe passage to Khartoum, a road journey of about 800 km (500 miles), although Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it had delivered some aid to Khartoum.

Some 330,000 Sudanese have also been displaced inside Sudan’s borders by the war, the UN migration agency said.

Thousands of Sudanese are trying to exit the country, many across the borders with Egypt, Chad and South Sudan. The U.N. warned on Monday that 800,000 people could eventually leave including refugees living in Sudan temporarily.

At the border with Egypt, where more than 40,000 people have crossed over the past two weeks, delays are causing refugees to wait for days before being let through after paying hundreds of dollars to make the journey north from Khartoum.

Foreign countries have carried out their own evacuation effort, with an airlift from outside the capital and long road convoys to Port Sudan where ships have ferried them abroad.

Most European countries have ended their evacuation efforts. Russia said on Tuesday it had pulled out 200 of its citizens.

The army and RSF had shared power since a 2021 coup but had fallen out over the timeline for a transition to civilian rule and moves to merge the RSF into the regular military.

The two had fought side by side to battle an uprising in Darfur from 2003 onwards in which more than 300,000 people died, raising accusations of genocide.

Source: Reuters

Gunfire and heavy artillery fire persisted Saturday in parts of Sudan’s capital Khartoum, residents said, despite the extension of a cease-fire between the country’s two top generals, whose battle for power has killed hundreds and sent thousands fleeing for their lives.

The civilian death toll jumped Saturday to 411 people, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, which monitors casualties. The fighting has wounded another 2,023 civilians so far, the group added, although the true toll is expected to be much higher. In the city of Genena, the provincial capital of war-ravaged West Darfur, intensified violence has killed 89 people. Fighters have moved into homes and taken over stores and hospitals as they battle in the densely populated streets, the syndicate said.

Khartoum, a city of some 5 million people, has been transformed into a front line in the grinding conflict between Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, the commander of Sudan’s military, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces. The outbreak of violence has dashed once-euphoric hopes for a democratic transition in Sudan after a popular uprising helped oust former dictator Omar al-Bashir.

Foreign countries continued to evacuate their citizens while thousands of Sudanese fled across borders. Britain said it was ending its evacuation flights Saturday, after demand for spots on the planes had declined. The United Arab Emirates announced Saturday it had started evacuating its citizens along with nationals of 16 other countries.

Over 50,000 refugees — mostly women and children — have crossed over to Chad, Egypt, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, the United Nations said, raising fears of wider instability in the region. Ethnic fighting and turmoil has scarred South Sudan and the Central African Republic for years while a 2021 coup has derailed Chad’s own democratic transition.

Those who escape Khartoum face more obstacles on their route to safety. The overland journey to Port Sudan, where ships then evacuate people via the Red Sea, has proven long and risky. Hatim el-Madani, a former journalist, said that paramilitary fighters were stopping refugees at roadblocks outside Khartoum, demanding they hand over their phones and valuables.

“There’s an outlaw, bandit-like nature to the RSF,” he said, referring to Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces. “They don’t have a supply line in place. That could get worse in the coming days.”

Airlifts from the country have also posed challenges, with a Turkish evacuation plane even hit by gunfire outside Khartoum on Friday.

On Saturday — despite a cease-fire extended under heavy international pressure early Friday — clashes continued around the presidential palace, headquarters of the state broadcaster and a military base in Khartoum, residents said. The battles sent thick columns of black smoke billowing over the city skyline.

In a few areas near the capital, including in Omdurman, some reported that shops were reopening as the scale of fighting dwindled. But in other areas, terrified residents hunkered down reported explosions thundering around them and fighters ransacking houses.

Now in its third week, the fighting has left swaths of Khartoum without electricity and running water. The Sudanese Health Ministry put the latest overall death toll at 528, with 4,500 wounded.

Those sheltering at home are running out of food and basic supplies. Residents in the city of Omdurman, west of Khartoum, have been waiting at least three days to get fuel — complicating their escape plans.

The U.N. relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said that U.N. offices in Khartoum, as well as the cities of Genena and Nyala in Darfur had been attacked and looted. Genena’s main hospital was also leveled in the fighting, Sudan’s health ministry said.

“This is unacceptable — and prohibited under international law,” Griffiths said.

Over the past 15 days, the generals have failed to deal a decisive blow to the other in their struggle for control of Africa’s third largest nation. The military has appeared to have the upper hand in the fighting, with its monopoly on air power, but it has been impossible to confirm its claims of advances.

“Soon, the Sudanese state with its well-grounded institutions will rise as victorious, and attempts to hijack our country will be aborted forever,” the Sudanese military said Saturday.

Both sides in the conflict have a long history of human rights abuses. The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias, which were accused of widespread atrocities when the government deployed them to put down a rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the early 2000s.

A unit of Sudan’s armed forces, known as the Central Reserve Police, have been sanctioned by the United Staets for grave human rights violations against Sudan’s pro-democracy protesters.

Accusations of rape, torture and other abuses against demonstrators carried out by the unit first surfaced in 2021, after Burhan and Dagalo joined forces in a military coup that ousted a civilian government. The Sudanese Interior Ministry confirmed the deployment of the Central Reserve Police in Khartoum on Saturday, posting photos of the fighters riding with heavy machine guns mounted on pickup trucks.

Former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who was ousted in the 2021 coup, appealed to the international community from a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, to push for an immediate halt to the conflict. He warned that a full-blown civil war in the strategically located country would have consequences not just for Sudan but for the world.

“God forbid if Sudan is to reach a proper civil war … it is a huge country and very diverse … it would be a nightmare for the world,” he said.

But the generals have so far rejected attempts at a compromise. Regional mediators have been unable to travel to Khartoum because of the chaotic fighting.

African Union Chairperson Moussa Faki said he would nonetheless try to send peacekeepers to the country.

“I’m ready to go there myself, even by road,” Faki said. “We ask the two generals to create the conditions for us to go to Khartoum.”

Source: AP

Sudan’s battling generals have agreed to a three-day ceasefire, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday, after 10 days of urban combat killed hundreds, wounded thousands, and sparked a mass exodus of foreigners.

Previous bids to pause the conflict failed to take hold but Blinken announced: “Following intense negotiation over the past 48 hours, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have agreed to implement a nationwide ceasefire starting at midnight on April 24, to last for 72 hours.”

Blinken’s statement came two hours before the truce was to take effect.

It came after the UN chief warned Sudan is on “the edge of the abyss” following fighting between the rivals who have waged unprecedented battles in the capital, Khartoum, as well as elsewhere in the country.

The fighting pits forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against those of his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The RSF emerged from the Janjaweed militia that then-president Omar al-Bashir unleashed in Darfur, leading to war crimes charges against Bashir and others.

The Forces of Freedom and Change, the main civilian bloc which the two generals ousted from power in a 2021 coup, said the truce would allow for “dialogue on the modalities of a permanent ceasefire.”

At least 427 people have been killed and more than 3,700 wounded, according to UN agencies.

Among the latest to die was the assistant administrative attache at Cairo’s embassy in Khartoum, Egypt’s foreign ministry said. The official was killed while heading from home to the embassy to follow up on evacuation procedures, it said.

More than 4,000 people have fled the country in foreign-organised evacuations that began on Saturday.

The United States and multiple European, Middle Eastern, African and Asian nations launched emergency missions to bring to safety their embassy staff and Sudan-based citizens by road, air and sea.

But millions of Sudanese are unable to flee.

They are trying to survive acute shortages of water, food, medicines and fuel as well as power and internet blackouts.

UN agencies reported some Sudanese civilians were able to escape “areas affected by fighting, including to Chad, Egypt and South Sudan”.

“Morgues are full. Corpses litter the streets” said Attiya Abdallah, head of the doctors’ union, which on Monday reported scores more casualties after sites in south Khartoum were “heavily shelled”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the violence in Sudan — already one of the world’s poorest countries, with a history of military coups — “could engulf the whole region and beyond”.

“We must all do everything within our power to pull Sudan back from the edge of the abyss,” Guterres said.

He had also, again, called for a ceasefire.

Britain requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Sudan, which was expected to take place on Tuesday, according to a diplomat.

A UN convoy carrying 700 people completed an arduous 850 kilometre (530 mile) road trip to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast from the capital, where they left behind gunfire and explosions.

The United Nations head of mission Volker Perthes said the convoy arrived safely.

“Thirty-five hours in a not so comfortable convoy are certainly better than three hours’ bombing and sitting under the shells,” he said.

A UN statement separately said he and other key staff will “remain in Sudan and will continue to work towards a resolution to the current crisis”.

‘Unspeakable destruction’

With Khartoum airport disabled after battles that left charred aircraft on the tarmac, many foreigners were airlifted out from smaller airstrips, to countries including Djibouti and Jordan.

US special forces swooped in with Chinook helicopters Sunday to rescue diplomats and their dependents, while Britain launched a similar rescue mission.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said more than 1,000 EU citizens had been taken out during a “long and intense weekend” involving airlift missions by France, Germany and others.

China said Monday it had “safely evacuated” a first group of citizens and would “try every means to protect the lives, properties and safety of 1,500 plus Chinese compatriots in Sudan”.

Source: AFP

Kenyan President William Ruto on Monday vowed to crack down on “unacceptable” religious movements after police discovered the bodies of 51 people suspected of belonging to a Christian cult that practised starvation.

A major search is underway in a forest near the coastal town of Malindi where dozens of corpses were exhumed over the weekend, with authorities fearing more grisly discoveries could be made.

A full-scale investigation has been launched into the Good News International Church and its leader, named in court documents as Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who preached that death by starvation delivered followers to God.

It is believed some of his devotees could still be hiding in the bush around Shakahola where the first bodies were discovered in shallow graves last week.

A 325-hectare (800-acre) area of woodland has been declared a crime scene as authorities seek to understand the true scale of what is being dubbed the “Shakahola Forest Massacre.”

Ruto, speaking in speaking in Kiambu county neighbouring Nairobi, said there was “no difference” between rogue pastors like Nthenge — who has been arrested and is awaiting trial — and terrorists.

State of survival: without water or food

“Terrorists use religion to advance their heinous acts. People like Mr Mackenzie are using religion to do exactly the same thing.”

“I have instructed the agencies responsible to take up the matter and to get to the root cause and to the bottom of the activities of… people who want to use religion to advance weird, unacceptable ideology.”

Police chief Japhet Koome was expected on Monday to visit the site, where teams clad in overalls have been scouring for more burial pits and possible cult survivors.

Fears for followers

There are fears some members could be hiding from authorities in the surrounding bushland and at risk of death if not quickly found.

A number of people have already been rescued and taken to hospital in Malindi, on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast.

Hussein Khalid, a member of the rights group Haki Africa that tipped off the police to the actions of the church, said one of those rescued had refused to eat despite being in clear physical distress.

“The moment she was brought here, she absolutely refused to be administered with first aid and she closed her mouth firmly, basically refusing to be assisted, wanting to continue with her fasting until she dies,” he told AFP.

The Kenya Red Cross said 112 people had been reported missing to its support staff at Malindi.

Nthenge turned himself in to police and was charged last month, according to local media, after two children starved to death in the custody of their parents.

He has since been released on bail of 100,000 Kenyan shillings ($700). The case is due to be heard again on May 2.

The case has grabbed the national attention, prompting the government to flag the need for tighter control of fringe denominations in a country with a history of self-declared pastors and movements that become immersed in crime.

Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki, who has announced he would visit the site on Tuesday, described the case as “the clearest abuse of the constitutionally enshrined human right to freedom of worship.”

But attempts to regulate religion in the majority-Christian country have been fiercely opposed in the past as attempts to undermine constitutional guarantees for a division between church and state.

Source: AFP

Sixty people were killed in Burkina Faso by attackers wearing military uniforms, a prosecutor said late Sunday, announcing an investigation into the latest attack in the insurgency-hit country.

“About 60 people were killed by people wearing the uniforms of our national armed forces” on Thursday in the village of Karma, in northern Yatenga province, Ouahigouya High Court prosecutor Lamine Kabore told AFP in a statement, citing the gendarmerie.

“The wounded have been evacuated and are currently being taken care of within our health facilities,” he said, adding that the perpetrators had “taken various goods”. According to residents contacted by AFP, survivors said more than 100 people on motorbikes and pick-up trucks raided Karma.

Dozens of men and young people were killed by the men, dressed in military uniforms, they said. Survivors gave a toll of “around 80 dead”. The West African country is battling a terrorist insurgency that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

The latest bloodshed occurred a week after 34 defence volunteers and six soldiers were killed in an attack by suspected terrorists near the village of Aorema, about 15 kilometres from Ouahigouya.

Following that attack, Burkina Faso’s military junta declared a “general mobilisation” to give the state “all necessary means” to combat a string of bloody attacks blamed on terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda and the Islamic State group.

The government had already announced a plan to recruit 5,000 more soldiers to battle the insurgency that has gripped one of the world’s poorest countries.

Captain Ibrahim Traoré, Burkina’s transitional president, has declared a goal of recapturing the 40 percent of the country’s territory which is controlled by terrorist groups.

The violence has left more than 10,000 people dead, according to nongovernmental aid groups, and displaced 2 million people from their homes.

Source: AFP