At least two people were killed in an attack by suspected members of terror group Boko Haram on Sunday morning in Cameroon’s Far North region.  Three suspected Boko Haram members targeted a bustling place in Bia, just 3 kilometers from Kolofata near Nigeria, home of the group.

According to local sources, at least one civilian was killed and about 30 others were wounded, some of them in critical condition. One of the three suicide bombers died on the spot with two others on the run.

The injured were evacuated to the subdivision of Mora using ambulances from the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), an elite unit of the Cameroonian armed force at the front against Boko Haram from the beginning of the crisis, the same sources added.

Nighttime incursions and suicide bombing attacks by Boko Haram have intensified recently in Mayo-Moskota and Kolofata subdivision.

Source: New China

Thirty people were killed and 16 injured early Sunday morning in a head-on collision between a bus and a truck on a road in central Kenya, police said.

“We have 30 dead,” said Rift Valley traffic police chief Zero Arome of the 3 AM (00.00 GMT) accident close to Nakuru town. “All the bodies have been removed from the wreckage and injured people taken to hospital.”

The accident occurred close to a notorious stretch on the Nakuru-Eldoret highway when a bus travelling from Busia, in western Kenya, collided with a truck coming from Nakuru.

Police said the death toll for that stretch of road has now reached 100 this month alone.

Arome said the drivers of both vehicles were among the dead, as well as a three-year-old child, while the injured had been taken to a Nakuru hospital.

One survivor, speaking from his hospital bed, said he had been asleep at the back of the bus when the collision happened.

“All I heard was a loud bang and screams from all over,” he said. “I was seated at the back and was helped out after some time because my legs were stuck. It is by the grace of God that I am alive. I saw many people dead and their bodies mutilated.”

Official statistics show that around 3,000 people die annually in road accidents in Kenya.

(Source: AFP)

Authorities in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea say they foiled an overnight attempt to overthrow the government of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasago – Africa’s longest serving leader.

The attempt as reported by the French news portal Jeune Afrique took place overnight from Wednesday December 27 to Thursday December 28.

Even though details of the incident are sketchy, there is said to be heightened security measures across the country with reports of swoops on persons believed to be involved.

Some 31 mercenaries were also reported to have been arrested in southern Cameroon as they attempted to enter the country apparently to help execute the overthrow. This is the second such attempt, the first took place in 2004.

Some political and security watchers are, however, calling the report a possible move by Malabo to purge the military and other security agencies of unwanted elements. Opposition members are also claiming members are being picked up arbitrarily.

“The opposition Citizens’ Party for Innovation (CI) has claimed multiple incidents of electoral fraud, and at least 50 opposition activists have been detained at the Evinayong prison (central Equatorial Guinea) since the election.

“A hundred others have been seeking refuge for the past several days at the party headquarters, located in the Nkolo Mbong district of the economic capital Bata, to avoid ongoing nocturnal arrests being carried out at opposition activists’ homes,” GardaWorld, a security website reported.

Source: Africa News

The Minister of Communication of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Hon Chris Anu has sounded a note of caution to all Southern Cameroonians in the State of Manyu ordering them to remain vigilant following the heavy deployment of troops and war equipment in the constituency by the Francophone dominated armed forces.

The Ambazonia Communication Secretary in a press release issued yesterday the 29^th of December 2017 called on Southern Cameroonians to move to safer locations as the Interim Government including the international community continues to monitor the denigrating situation in Manyu. Mr. Chris Anu also stated that “nobody should linger around in order to be killed.”

The minister was reacting to the massive militarization of the Manyu State yesterday that involved the deployment of amour tanks and heavy machine guns transported from French Cameroun into Manyu precisely in Besongabang village.

By Judith Fon in Mamfe

Libya put 142 illegal migrants on a flight back to Guinea on Wednesday with the help of the UN migration agency, officials said, as the North African country steps up deportations to ease severe overcrowding in its detention centers.

The International Organization for Migration flew the Guinean migrants from two western cities – Zewara and Zawya – to the city of Misrata, from where they boarded a plane for Conakry.

(Source: Reuters)

Uganda’s armed forces have killed more than 100 Uganda-based rebels during a high-scale offensive in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Ugandan army said in a statement Wednesday that several other rebels of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) were wounded in aerial attacks and artillery raids.

The military says the operation has been carried out from Ugandan territory.

The rebels were accused of carrying out the attack that left several UN peacekeepers dead earlier this month.

On December 7, armed assailants attacked a base of the United Nations peacekeepers in eastern DRC, killing at least 15 peacekeeperswho were mostly from Tanzania.

The base, which is located about 45 kilometers from the town of Beni, has been repeatedly attacked by rebels from the ADF. It is home to the peacekeeping mission’s rapid intervention force, which has a rare mandate to go on the offensive.

The UN described the attack in Congo as the worst in the recent UN history as well as a war crime.

The ADF originated in Uganda as a rebel force against the government and carried out deadly bombings in the 1990s. A military campaign forced them to relocate to eastern Congo.

The DRC had one of the most brutal colonial rules before undergoing decades of corrupt dictatorship and back-to-back civil wars that left the mineral-rich country poor and politically unstable.

In 2006, the UN mission helped carry out Congo’s first free and fair elections in 46 years, paving the way for President Joseph Kabila to be elected for a five-year term.

His second term in office ended in 2016. Under the DR Congo’s constitution, Kabila is banned from seeking a third term. However, he is authorized to stay in office until his successor is elected but he decided to remain in power. This prompted the UN to urge the Congolese authorities “to respect the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Congolese Constitution.” The delay in holding an election has flared up violence in the country.

Source: Presstv

The worsening conflict between Cameroon’s Francophone dominated government and English-speaking Cameroonians now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia have displaced about 40 000 people. About 20 000 people are internally displaced while over 40 000 have fled to neighbouring Nigeria. Up to 65 percent of children in the affected area are displaced and face difficulties to attend school.

Tensions between the Francophone dominated security forces and Anglophone communities in the Southern Cameroons have intensified since November resulting in casualties among the civilian population and security forces.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has registered 7 204 arrivals in remote areas of Nigeria’s Cross River State. The refugee agency indicated that thousands more are awaiting registration.

Some 70 per cent of the registered asylum seekers, mostly women and children, come from Akwaya. It is among areas worst affected by deadly protests against alleged marginalization by the government dominated by French-speaking Cameroonians.

“As the unrest in Cameroon continues and more asylum seekers arrive, UNHCR is concerned that the local population’s capacity will soon be stretched to its limits,” said a UNHCR spokesperson. UNHCR and partners have developed a contingency plan for an estimated 40 000 new arrivals from Cameroon.

The minority English-speaking community in Cameroon is disgruntled by the reunification process that brought the English and the French-speaking parts of the country together in 1961. They complain about marginalisation and under-representation in the country’s Francophone-dominated administration of President Paul Biya. The Central African country is seen as fragile with the 2018 elections and the Boko Haram insurgency infiltrating from neighbouring Nigeria posing other problems.

CCN with files from CAJNews

Unable to reach Europe in search of a better life, Aliou Ndiaye settled in Morocco instead, giving up on his original goal like thousands of other sub-Saharan African refugees.

“Everyone has the right to go to another country to try their luck,” the 31-year-old former fish exporter from Senegal told AFP.

“Lots of people are trying to reach Europe, but some end up staying to make a living.”

Seven out of 10 West Africa-born refugees stay on the continent, according to a December study by the Moroccan think tank OCP Policy Center.

Discouraged by the danger of passing through countries such as Libya and by harsh policies aimed at preventing migrants going to Europe, many settle in “transit” countries including Morocco.

Ndiaye said he gave up after he realized reaching Spain was “too hard”.

He took on several informal jobs and finally set himself up as a street vendor in Rabat, where he expects to remain.

His story illustrates a trend that has gained increasing attention from Moroccan politicians, civil society and researchers.

Morocco has turned from a transit country into a host country for refugees, according to the government’s High Commission for Planning.

“The Moroccan authorities have switched from a security approach, which criminalized illegal immigration, to a discourse of integration,” said Mehdi Alioua, former head of a group that helped migrants.

He said the new approach involves moving refugees from border regions to the country’s big cities, taking them further from their ultimate goal — reaching Europe.

That has meant that many stay on in Morocco.

Rabat has become home to many sub-Saharan Africans who work at informal markets in the capital, while others, still hoping to make it to Europe, live in informal camps near bus stations and eke out a living by begging.

(Source: AFP)

A suspected rebel militia group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has killed at least nine military forces during two separate attacks in the country’s volatile east.

The Congolese army said the fatalities took place in the eastern province of South Kivu over the past four days, accusing Mai Mai Mazembe militiamen from the Nande ethnic group of being responsible for both attacks.

“The army recorded a loss of nine soldiers in two ambushes in the Baraka operational zone” in South Kivu, an unnamed military official told AFP.

A lieutenant was killed on Sunday in the village of Lweba, seven kilometers from the Baraka district, the official said, adding that the other deaths came in an attack two days earlier.

“Our hospital received the bodies of eight soldiers killed by bullets on Friday,” said a hospital source in Lulimba, a village 60 kilometers south of Baraka.

Dozens of armed groups have been active in the eastern DR Congo ever since a war there in 1998, and the Congolese army, joined by United Nations troops, is on the offensive against rebel groups.

Seeking safety, tens of thousands of people have escaped to neighboring Zambia, where they are facing “hugely underfunded” aid operations, according to UN figures.

Congo has also been facing numerous problems over the past few decades such as grinding poverty and crumbling infrastructure.

Political crisis has exacerbated in the African country as President Joseph Kabila is still in power despite his second and final term as president officially ending in December 2016.

Under the DR Congo’s constitution, Kabila is banned from seeking a third term. However, Kabila is authorized to stay in office until his successor is elected.

The long-awaited election to replace Kabila has been postponed until December 23, 2018. The delay in holding an election has flared up violence in the country.

Source: Presstv

Cameroon has denied allegations that its soldiers crossed into Nigeria without permission and attacked villages said to be hosting and training armed separatist groups.

The media has reported that at least one incursion has been confirmed by the Nigerian government and military officials. However, Cameroon says that since President Paul Biya declared war on armed separatists about a month ago, it has attacked only border villages in Cameroon where the groups were hiding.

“The terrorists had taken advantage of the dense forests at the border with Nigeria to set up secret training camps from which they organized raids against our defense forces,” said Cameroon’s communication minister and government spokesman, Issa Tchiroma. “Following the dismantling operation thus carried out, the hideout of these murderers were literally destroyed and the villages previously taken hostage were liberated.”

Two weeks ago, Cameroon said the armed separatists advocating independence for the English-speaking northwest and southwest portions of the country were being trained in Nigeria. Lawan Abba Gashagar, Nigeria’s high commissioner to Cameroon and special envoy of president Muhammadu Buhari, visited Cameroon’s president and said they would collaborate in fighting the terrorists.

This week, Reuters and Nigerian local newspapers reported that Cameroon troops had crossed into Nigeria in pursuit of the armed separatists without seeking authorization from Nigeria, causing a fallout between the two governments.

Cameroon says it attacked separatist training camps in three of its border villages around Mamfe and Eyumojock.

Ojong Anslem, a resident of Eyumojock, says the separatists are still gaining a lot of support from the borders.

“What is now on the streets in the northwest and southwest is secession,” Anslem said.

The UNHCR says the violence has pushed thousands of Cameroonians across the border to Nigeria since October 1, the day the separatists said they had declared their independence and their humanitarian needs were growing.

Source: VOA