As many as 64 refugees are feared dead after a traffickers’ overcrowded rubber dinghy from Libya started sinking in the Mediterranean Sea, officials said Monday.

The Italian coast guard rescued 86 people from the boat hours after it started sinking Saturday morning due to a puncture. Specially trained rescue divers leapt into the water to pull dozens to safety, including those who managed to stay aboard the half-submerged dinghy as well as others already flailing in the cool waters around it. The bodies of eight dead women were also recovered.

Since trafficking dinghies are often crammed with far more than 100 refugees, fears quickly arose that dozens more could be missing in the sinking. UN officials said Monday that accounts from survivors bore out those fears.

An Italian coast guard search that went through the night didn’t find any more survivors or corpses.

Flavio Di Giacomo of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a tweet Monday that survivors interviewed by the agency in Catania, Sicily, after they arrived on a rescue ship said 150 people had been aboard the dinghy when it set out from the coast of Libya.

“Sixty-four migrants lost their life in the shipwreck (which) occurred last Saturday,” Di Giacomo said, adding that “probably 56 missing migrants” were lost at sea.

“Among them there were many children who are believed to have drowned at sea,” said Doctors Without Borders Sea on Twitter.

Catania Mayor Enzo Bianco told Italian Radio Radicale that among the survivors was a child who lost her mother.

“I watched a 3-year-old girl while she was starting to play at the port here. She was saved, grabbed at the last second by the coast guard in the sea,” the mayor said. “She was clinging to her mother and she saw her drown.”

Bianco said the child is now with her aunt, who was among the survivors.

The dinghy, half-submerged, had been spotted by an aircraft from a European naval mission combating refugee trafficking.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees have been rescued at sea and taken to southern Italian ports in the last few years, including nearly 119,000 last year. Another 3,100 drowned along the way in 2017, the IOM says.

They include refugees fleeing wars or persecution who hope to receive asylum as well as economic refugees, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, who aren’t eligible to be granted permission to live in Europe.

Italy is working with various groups and authorities in Libya to slow the flow of newcomers.

Di Giacomo couldn’t immediately be reached for further details on the weekend survivors.

(Source: Agencies)

Cameroon Concord News has been informed that an emergency meeting of the African Bar is ongoing on the arrest of the Interim Head of State of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and 9 members of his cabinet in Abuja, Nigeria.

Sources within the African Bar say there are two members among those arrested namely Elias Eyambe and Nalova Bih. We understand a petition will be handed over to the Attorney General of the Federal Republic of Nigeria tomorrow Monday the 8^th of January 2018. The leadership of the African Bar is expected to hold an international press conference by midday tomorrow.

There is no extradition treaty between Nigeria and French Cameroun.  A transfer of Southern Cameroonians to La Republique du Cameroun where they will be immediately executed will be a violation of international law and construed as an act of terrorism.

Cameroon Concord News cream of reporters in Abuja and Lagos will provide you details on the happenings in Nigeria tomorrow.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Nigerian Secret Service officers have arrested the leader of the Ambazonian Interim Government including seven members of the governing council. Cameroon Intelligence Report learned that Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and seven prominent members of the Interim Government were summoned to Abuja for questioning following the detention of 39 Southern Cameroonians in Taraba by Nigerian security forces.

Our correspondent in Abuja said the Interim President and 7 members of his team were last seen at Nera Hotels in Abuja. Nothing has so far filtered about the exact location of the incident and the names of the Ambazonians who accompanied the President to Abuja.

We understand the Ambazonian Secretary for Education, Wilfred Tassang was running late for the meeting. He has also not been seen ever since the trip to Abuja. CIR had reported that the Biya regime had authorized its secret service through a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Philemon Yang to liaise with Nigeria to assassinate Sisiku Ayuk Tabe considered to be the principal Southern Cameroons planner of military and terrorist operations against La Republique du Cameroun.

The Buhari administration has not claimed responsibility for the abdication. Abuja is one of the most secure cities in Africa and the seat of the Nigerian government.

Culled from www.camerooonintelligencereport.com

Southern Cameroonians who fled from Kembong to Ossing village recently following a Cameroon armed forces onslaught have reportedly turned down food items donated by the Member of Parliament for the Eyumojock constituency, Hon. Okpu Susan Nsosei .

The female MP, according to a Cameroon Concord News source, had taken the gift items: three bags of rice and two bags of salt on Friday the 29^th of December to Ossing village hosting more than 400 Ambazonians from Kembong but was bluntly rejected. All entreaties to make the Ossing traditional council realise that the items were meant for distribution to the needy from Kembong fell on deaf ears as the people of Eyumojock stated that they were not hungry and didn’t solicit for any donations.

The ruling CPDM party has been banned in Southern Cameroons and designated as a terrorist organization by the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.  Informed sources in Ossing indicated that the donation came while the people of Ossing were having a meeting on how to accommodate those who escaped from Kembong and they all corroborated the fact that the CPDM was no longer a legal entity in Southern Cameroons and insisted the food items be returned.

Hon. Okpu Susan Nsosei has not been seen or heard ever since the genocide campaign started in her Eyumojock constituency.

By Ojong Joseph  Ojong in Mamfe

Mindful of the fact that the Biya regime is unable to refine enough crude for local consumption, the Francophone dominated armed forces destroyed petrol worth more than 400 million FCFA in the Ekok County in Ambazonia.

The Cameroon government forces waging a war against the people of Southern Cameroons said it destroyed the fuel imported from Nigeria and sold inside Cameroon territory. Cameroon Concord News gathered that the depots in Ekok were destroyed last week.

Some traditional rulers in Manyu including the Chief of Ekok had reportedly asked the Yaoundé regime to legalise and regulate the sale of petrol as a means of job creation. The Francophone government has not indicated any willingness to legalise or regulate the fuel sector but is now bend on stifling the Ambazonian ecomony.

The military post in Ekok now has a gunboat to fortify its operational capacity in the Mfum River and had intensified patrols in the border settlements and waterways in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.  The intensified patrols by the French Cameroun army command had led to the arrest of hundreds of Southern Cameroonians. A similar action was staged in Mamfe at the Satom Bridge.

By Judith Fon in Ekok

Fourteen worshippers were killed Wednesday when a suicide bomber attacked a mosque on Nigeria’s border with Cameroon, civilian vigilantes told AFP. The suspected Boko Haram jihadist blew himself up amid worshippers inside the mosque in Gamboru around 5:00 am (0400 GMT), shortly before morning prayers. “Fourteen bodies have been pulled out of the rubble,” said Umar Kachalla, a civilian militiaman, who said the mosque had been completely destroyed. “Only the muezzin has survived and we believe more bodies are buried under the debris,” said Kachalla. “The death toll may likely rise.”

An hour earlier, a patrol of vigilantes spotted four suspected suicide bombers on the outskirts of the town and arrested one of them after a chase, said a second vigilante, Shehu Mada. “Two of them turned back and fled while the fourth disappeared into the darkness and we believe it was he who attacked the mosque,” Mada said. Boko Haram’s eight-year insurgency against the government of Nigeria has spilled into neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, killing around 20,000 people and displacing more than 2.6 million. In August 2014, the group seized Gamboru, a trading hub along with neighbouring town of Ngala.

Nigerian troops retook both towns in September 2015 with the help of Chadian forces following months-long offensives. Despite the recapture of the area, Boko Haram fighters continue to launch sporadic attacks, laying ambush on troops and vehicles as well as attacking and abducting farmers. On Tuesday Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau released a video message claiming a series of attacks in the northeast including those in Gamboru.

Source: Vanguard

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