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Gunmen mounted on pick-up trucks and motorcycles killed 12 gendarmes and wounded several in an attack on their base in western Niger, near the Mali border, on Saturday, two security sources said.

The village is a few dozen kilometers from where militants killed four US soldiers in an ambush on Oct. 4 that has thrown a spotlight on the US counter-terrorism mission in Niger, which straddles a large expanse of the Sahara.

The gunmen crossed over the border from Mali and drove up to the village of Ayorou, about 40 km (25 miles) inside, before springing their attack, the security sources said.

“They were heavily armed. They had rocket launchers and machine guns. They came in four vehicles each with about seven fighters,” said a security source on the scene.

One of the attackers was killed in an exchange of fire, he added. A spokesman for Niger’s military said he could not confirm any details of the attack.

Several extremist militant groups and well-armed ethnic militia are known to operate in the area near the border with Mali, and there have been at least 46 attacks recorded there since early last year.

However, security officials suspect a relatively new militant group calling itself Islamic State in the Greater Sahara to have been behind many of them, including the ambush on the joint US-Niger patrol.

(Source: Reuters)

The  Cross River State Police Command on Monday said that six residents of Danare community in Boki Local Government Area were shot by gendarmes from Bodam community during an invasion on the Nigerian territory by Cameroonians.

Hafiz Inuwa, the Commissioner of Police, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Calabar.

He said that a Cameroonian community, `Bodam’, on the border with Nigeria’s Boki Local Government Area, had been in crisis with Danare community over the international land dispute. Mr. Inuwa said after visiting Danare community that although no life was lost, six residents of Danare community were shot by the Cameroonians.

“We found out that six persons were shot and they are currently in the hospital as the pellets were being removed from their bodies. “They were shot by the people of Bodam village from Cameroon. We have advised the people to restore normalcy and shun all forms of crisis and allow the government to take charge.

Source: Information Nigeria

With Central and West Africa combating some of the world’s deadliest terrorist organisations Interpol brought police chiefs and counter-terrorism experts from the regions together to help streamline and enhance ongoing law enforcement efforts.

A two-day high-level meeting earlier this month in Yaoundé, Cameroon – the first of its kind – gave delegates from 21 countries an opportunity express their needs and be briefed on areas where Interpol can provide additional support.

This includes assistance in identifying and locating members of known transnational terrorist groups and supporters; helping countries bolster security at national and regional borders; preventing and combating the use of cyberspace for terrorist purposes; monitoring and detecting trafficking of weapons and chemical and explosive materials; and tracking and curbing the financial flows of terrorist organisations.

Opening the conference, René Emmanuel Sadi, Cameroon Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation said no region was immune to the threat of terrorism which required a unified and global response.

“The complexity of the challenges, the consequences of security gaps and exploitation of loopholes by terrorists requires a new kind of cross-border preparedness and response by police,” Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock said.

“The terrorist threat faced by central and west Africa is not only severe, but is escalating in frequency and impact. “We must build on national and regional expertise to further strengthen global security architecture if we are to develop a unified and effective response,” added the Interpol Chief, who highlighted the development of Interpol’s Regional Counter Terrorism Nodes (RCTNs) to achieve balance.

Based in Interpol offices, the RCTNs will enable counter-terrorism experts to sit side-by-side, enabling direct information exchange and rapid response capabilities to terrorist threats, backed by the Global Counter-Terrorism Centre at Interpol General Secretariat headquarters in France.

As part of a project to expand and modernise I-24/7, Interpol’s global communications network, Stock announced a EUR two million project to renew equipment in Interpol National Central Bureaus (NCBs) across Africa.

The results which can be achieved when frontline officers have access to Interpol global databases were recently highlighted by the arrest of two foreign terrorist fighters who were the subject of Red Notices, following checks against Interpol databases by West African border officials.

Increased exchange of identifying information is also a key issue for discussion. Biometric data, such as photos, fingerprints and DNA profiles, shared via Interpol have already led to positive identification of terrorists around the world, including via facial recognition.

Source: Defenseweb

At least six persons were injured and property destroyed following a clash between residents of Danere community of Boki Local Government Area of Cross River State and Bodam region of Cameroon.

The crisis is said to have erupted as a result of protracted tensions over poorly defined international boundaries.

Cross River State’s Commissioner of Police, Hafiz Inuwa, confirmed the incident to Channels Television during a telephone conversation on Sunday. Inuwa said he led security agencies to the community about six hours away from Calabar, the state capital. He said peace has been restored to the community and urged youths around the community to remain calm.

Source: Channels Television

Four Moldovan citizens were killed and two others were injured when a cargo plane chartered by the French military crashed into the sea near the airport in Ivory Coast’s main city, Abidjan, on Saturday, Ivorian and French officials said.

Four French citizens survived the crash but were injured, Ivory Coast’s Security Minister Sidiki Diakite told reporters at the scene. Several Ivorian security sources said French soldiers were among the wounded.

“What we can say for the time being is that this morning around 8:30 (0830 GMT), an Antonov plane crashed…with 10 on board including the crew members,” he said.

The crash occurred during a storm with heavy rain and lightning and rescuers were hampered by rough seas. Though Abidjan’s airport is located in a heavily populated area, it did not appear that anyone was hurt on the ground.

The French military operates a logistics base next to the airport in support of its Barkhane operation, combating extremist militants in West Africa’s Sahel region.

“This was a plane chartered by the French army in the framework of the Barkhane force in order to carry out logistical missions,” French army spokesman Colonel Patrick Steiger said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the plane to crash, he said, adding that the four injured French citizens were being treated at the French military base adjacent to the airport.

France’s ambassador to Ivory Coast along with French gendarmes and soldiers quickly arrived at the crash site.

Hundreds of residents of the heavily populated neighborhood of Port Bouet, which surrounds the airport, crowded around the crash site. Some of them assisted firefighters and rescue divers who freed the bodies of the dead from the wreckage, which had broken into several large pieces.

French soldiers and Ivorian security forces later sealed off the area and French and Ivorian military vessels patrolled waters surrounding the crash site. The name of the company operating the aircraft was not immediately known.

(Source: Reuters)

Thousands of previously Europe-bound asylum seekers held in Libyan detention centers are said to be in dire conditions and in need of urgent medical help.

“The situation is very tragic… disastrous. There’s a lack of support,” Abdulhameed Muftah Frida, the head of the al-Hamra detention center in Gharyan, said on Thursday.

About 5,800 migrants have been transferred to the center since fighting broke out last month in the coastal city of Sabratha, a hub for human trafficking to Europe. About 2,000 people have already been sent from Gharyan to other centers in the capital, Tripoli.

A local armed group in a Libyan coastal city west of Tripoli has reportedly been halting refugee boats from setting out across the Mediterranean over the past months.

United Nations (UN) agencies have been trying to provide support for the thousands of mainly sub-Saharan African migrants now stranded.

Many have been taken to centers, some of which are notorious for widespread abuse and poor conditions.

Meanwhile, humanitarian workers have limited access to those centers.

Muftah said 70 percent of the migrants who are brought to his center are in need of medical attention and the center cannot to meet their needs.

“We appeal to all international organizations and the Libyan state to consider the humanitarian condition of these migrants,” Muftah added.

He further said there were many children and some pregnant women in the center, several of whom had gone into labor since arriving.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein, who visited Libya on Tuesday, raised the issue of the migrants with Libyan authorities.

Libya has turned into a scene of rampant militancy since the NATO military intervention of 2011, which came amid an uprising against longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Back in April, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) raised the alarm over the climbing number of refugees passing through Libya, who were being traded in so-called slave markets before being held for ransom and subjected to malnutrition and sexual abuse.

Culled from Presstv

Cameroon Intelligence Report sources have revealed that 4 heads of state were scheduled to visit Yaoundé in the last eight months and have meetings with President Biya, yet these visits have been perpetually annulled.

Our sources further pointed out that the main reason for the cancellation of these visits was the state of Biya’s health that has been deteriorating. Among the heads of state who decided to cancel their visits to Cameroon were the Ivorian President Ouattara, President Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo Brazzaville, President Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea and the Head of State of Niger Republic.

Etoudi has also reportedly stopped a lobbying process for a visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Cameroon.  However a number of world leaders have visited Cameroon, mainly African presidents including the head of the Republic of Chad, Idris Deby and the Senegalese President.

Biya also met the CEO of the African Development Bank as well as the Italian Head of State recently in Yaoundé.  French Cameroon political commentators have said that Biya’s continued stay in power  despite his ailing health is proof that Paris and the Francophone dominated military leadership is working on finding an alternative which would appease all the political parties including Southern Cameroonians.

Biya assumed the presidency on November 6th 1982 and has been re-elected uncountable times following the staging of numerous counterfeit presidential elections and his supporters are preparing for another mandate in the 2018 elections.

Biya has made constitutional amendments that grant him the right to run for successive presidential terms, after the previous text of the Constitution limited the number of covenants to only two.

Biya was last seen at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York. He remained in a five star Intercontinental Hotel in Swiss from where he is receiving treatment for prostate cancer. We gathered he has lost his ability to speak. The state of his health has prompted some key figures within his ruling CPDM party to demand he step down but these calls have been unanswered.

Source: Cameroon Intelligence Report

Militants ambushed a group of about 30 civilians in northeastern Congo and killed many of them before fighting a fierce battle with the army, politicians said on Sunday.

The attack took place near the city of Beni and, if the deaths are confirmed, would be the first mass-killing this year in that area. It has seen relative peace since more than 800 people were killed in dozens of massacres between 2014 and 2016.

The spate of attacks raised serious questions about the state’s ability to impose order over a region full of ethnic tensions and plagued by pockets of lawlessness where armed groups prey on populations and exploit rich mineral reserves.

In the latest attack, on Saturday, assailants armed with machetes and guns ambushed travelers on the main road linking Beni territory in North Kivu province to neighboring Uganda, Boris Maelezo, a member of parliament from the area, told Reuters.

He said about 30 civilians were riding on motorbikes, with several people on each vehicle, and that most of them could have been killed.

Albert Baliesima Kadukima, another lawmaker from the area, said two women freed by the militants had told local authorities the assailants had slit the throats of more than a dozen people.

Mak Hazukay, a local army spokesman, said Congolese forces were battling the militants and attempting to dislodge them from a section of the road that was several kilometers long.

The two lawmakers and the army spokesman said the militants belonged to the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan extremist group active near the border between Congo and Uganda.

Eastern Congo is a tinderbox of ethnic tensions and has been racked by conflict for more than two decades. It is the world’s biggest source of coltan, used in mobile phones and other electronic products.

Various armed groups have committed atrocities around Beni since late 2014 to settle scores and undermine rivals, with attacks sometimes sectarian in nature.

(Source: Reuters)

Cameroon has disputed a report that said 100 people died in anti-government protests. The African Union has largely remained quiet as secession sentiments gather steam in the central African nation.

Cameroonian authorities on Thursday rejected a report by a human rights group which said at least 100 people were killed by government forces during last weekend’s protests. Initial reports stated 17 people had been killed.

Didier Badjeck, Cameroon’s army spokesman, also disputed figures released by Amnesty International which put the death toll at 17. Badjeck said they recorded 10 deaths. “A lot of countries in Africa have decided to use heavy handedness to squash opposition,” Christian Ani, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa, told DW. “This is the challenge of lack of foresight within government.”

Violent protests broke out in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions following a symbolic declaration of independence from the rest of the country. President Paul Biya has completely ruled out independence, he also strongly opposes the return to a federal structure, which existed in Cameroon from the time it gained independence in 1961 until 1984, when Biya abolished the federal system for a unified Republic of Cameroon.

Cameroon’s security service has been cracking down hard on protesters

English speaking Cameroonians make up 20 percent of Cameroon’s population of 23 million. They have long complained that they are treated like second-class citizens by the predominantly French speaking government in Yaounde. The root of the grievances date back to the end of World War One when the League of Nations decided to split Kamerun, a former German colony, between the allied French and British powers.

AU tight-lipped on Cameroon and Nigeria

The African Union has so far refrained from intervening in the ongoing crisis in Cameroon. Efforts by DW to get the AU’s position on the contentious issue were unsuccessful. “It’s a failure of the African Union and the UN collectively,” Ayo Johnson, Director of Viewpoint Africa and an expert on African politics told DW in an interview. “Nigeria and Cameroon are experiencing separatist calls from unsettled, unhappy, disgruntled parts of the country.”

In Nigeria, Igbo people are calling for a separatist state which they call Biafra. “These two [separatist movements], are pulling their respective countries apart,” Johnson said. “Sequentially, the international community; the African Union and the UN have been unable to take drastic action which is being called for by many people right now.”

External interference in such issues is very sensitive. The Biafran war (1967-1970) was devastating. More than one million people died, most of them through hunger and famine. It also left the Igbo people feeling further marginalized. “They have always thought they are not involved in politics, their voices are not heard, opportunities never come their way and they don’t have access to jobs,” Johnson said.

These are  similar sentiments which are being heard locally in the English speaking regions of Cameroon. “But the international community is unable, unwilling and does not have the appetite to take strong measures which could put pressure on President [Muhammadu] Buhari of Nigeria and President Biya of Cameroon, therein lies the problem.” The EU, US and rights group Amnesty International have all spoken out against the violence in Cameroon.

The AU’s intervention options

For Johnson, there are a couple of options at the AU’s disposal. “Sanctions could be one, revoking of membership could be another.” He said, however, that revoking membership is symbolic as it doesn’t really affect the country. “But psychologically it has an impact.” Sanctions on the other hand are different; they could mean travel bans, restrictions on access to services in the international arena. Alternatively, they could be calls for a special rapporteur for the UN and the African Union.

Pro and anti-government protests in Cameroon have been steadily growing

That type of special envoy could be sent, not necessarily to mediate, but to find out what’s acceptable or unacceptable on the ground; more so for those who are calling for separatism, to find out how those flames could be doused. “Such reports can be tabled at the UN Security Council and further action collectively across the UN and its African Union affiliate would be able to make stronger decisions.”

Source: Deutsche Welle