Sudan’s military ruled out negotiations with a rival paramilitary force on Thursday, saying it would only accept its surrender as the two sides continued to battle in central Khartoum and other parts of the country, threatening to wreck international attempts to broker a longer cease-fire.

A tenuous 24-hour cease-fire that began the previous day ran out Thursday evening with no word of extension. The military’s statement raised the likelihood of a renewed surge in the nearly week-long violence that has killed hundreds and pushed Sudan’s population to the breaking point. Alarm has grown that the country’s medical system was on the verge of collapse, with many hospitals forced to shut down and others running out of supplies.

The expiring truce had failed to put a stop to fighting throughout the day and brought only marginal calm to some parts of the capital Khartoum. But many residents took advantage to flee the homes where they have been trapped for days. “Massive numbers” of people, mostly women and children, were leaving in search of safer areas, said Atiya Abdulla Atiya, secretary of the Doctors’ Syndicate.

Thursday afternoon, the military said in a statement that it would not negotiate with its rival, the Rapid Support Forces, over an end to the crisis and would only discuss terms of its surrender. “There would be no armed forces outside (of) the military system,” it said.

The demise of the truce, the second attempt this week, underscored the failure of the United States, U.N., European Union and regional powers to push Sudan’s top generals to halt their campaigns to seize control of the country. Instead, army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo have each appeared determined to win outright military victory over the other.

In a sign they expect violence to escalate, the U.S. and other countries were making preparations to evacuate their citizens in Sudan — a difficult prospect since most major airports have become battlegrounds and movement out of Khartoum to safer areas is dangerous.

The U.S. military is moving assets to a base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti for a possible evacuation of American Embassy personnel, administration officials said. Japan plans to send military planes to Djibouti, and the Netherlands has dispatched its own to Jordan.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres appealed for the combatants to commit to a three-day cease-fire to coincide with the holiday of Eid al-Fitr, beginning Friday, marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. “We are living a very important moment in the Muslim calendar. I think this is the right moment for a cease-fire to hold,” he told reporters.

But so far direct communications to the rival generals by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Turkish president and others over the past days have been unable to secure even 24 hours of calm, much less a longer truce aimed at leading to negotiations to resolve the crisis. Each side’s main regional allies, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, have called in vain for talks.

At least 330 people have been killed and 3,300 wounded in the fighting since it began Saturday, the U.N.’s World Health Organization said, but the toll is likely higher because many bodies lie uncollected in the streets.

Through the day Thursday, gunfire could be heard constantly across Khartoum. Residents reported the heaviest fighting around the main military headquarters in central Khartoum. Military warplanes struck RSF positions at the airport and in the neighboring city of Omdurman, residents said. The military said its warplanes Thursday also struck a convoy of RSF vehicles heading to the capital, though the claim could not be independently confirmed.

Khartoum residents have been desperate for a respite after days of being trapped in their homes, their food and water running out. Aid groups have been unable to deliver help to Sudan’s overwhelmed hospitals, Atiya said. Hospitals in Khartoum are running dangerously low on medical supplies, often operating without power and clean water. Around 70% of hospitals near the clash sites throughout the country are out of service, the Sudanese Doctors Syndicate said Thursday. At least nine hospitals were bombed, it said.

“We are worried that Sudan’s healthcare system could completely collapse,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general, said.

Airstrikes on Thursday afternoon hit medical facilities in Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan province southwest of Khartoum, killing at least 26 civilians and 17 policemen, the Doctors’ Syndicate said. Clashes have intensified in the city, driving more than 3,300 people from their homes, many o them crowding in a school and a sports facility, it said.

The fighting has been disastrous for a country where the United Nations says around a third of the population — some 16 million people — are in need of humanitarian aid. The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF warned that critical care has been disrupted for 50,000 severely acutely malnourished children, who need round-the-clock treatment.

Save the Children said power outages across the country have destroyed cold chain storage facilities for lifesaving vaccines, as well as the national stock of insulin and several antibiotics. Millions of children, the aid group said, are now at risk of disease and further health complications. It said 12% of the country’s 22 million children are suffering from malnutrition and are vulnerable to other diseases.

The Egyptian and Sudanese militaries said that Egypt succeeded in repatriating dozens of its military personnel who had been detained by the RSF when it attacked Merowe airport, north of the capital, early in the fighting. Egypt said its personnel were there for training and joint exercises.

The conflict has once again derailed Sudan’s attempt to establish democratic rule since a popular uprising helped oust helped depose long-time autocrat Omar al-Bashir four years ago. Burhan and Dagalo jointly carried out a coup purging civilians from a transitional government in 2021.

The explosion of violence came after weeks of growing tensions between the two generals over new international attempts to press a return to civilian government.

Both sides 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.

The conflict has raised fears of a spillover from the strategically located nation to its African neighbors.

Sudan’s fighting has also caused up to 20,000 Sudanese to seek refuge in eastern Chad, the U.N. said Thursday. At least 320 Sudanese soldiers fled to Chad, where they were disarmed, said Daoud Yaya Brahim, Chad’s defense minister. The troops were apparently fleeing from Darfur, where the RSF is the most powerful armed force.

“Chad is for the moment trying to remain neutral … (but) Chad will be forced to pick sides if Sudan continues its descent into civil war,” said Benjamin Hunger, Africa analyst for Verisk Maplecroft, a risk assessment firm.

Source: AP

Thousands of residents fled Sudan’s capital Wednesday as fighting between the army and paramilitaries raged for a fifth day after a 24-hour truce collapsed. Roughly 200 people have already been killed.

The violence erupted on Saturday between the forces of two generals who seized power in a 2021 coup: army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as “Hemedti”, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

It followed a bitter dispute between Burhan and Dagalo over the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army – a key condition for a final deal aimed at resuming Sudan’s democratic transition.

“There is no ceasefire at all,” FRANCE 24’s regional correspondent Bastien Renouil reported from Nairobi, citing sources on the ground.

“The fighting in Khartoum continues and [the sources] say they could hear gunshots all night long, and that now planes are flying over the city bombing locations that they [the army] believe belong to the RSF. The RSF is fighting these planes, shooting anti-aircraft artillery.”

Civilians huddled in their homes were becoming increasingly desperate, with dwindling food supplies, power outages, and a lack of running water.

Their hopes of being evacuated were dashed on Tuesday when a 24-hour humanitarian ceasefire collapsed within minutes of its proposed start at 1600 GMT.

Streets littered with bodies

On Wednesday morning, thousands of people took matters into their own hands and began leaving their homes in Khartoum, some in cars and others on foot, including women and children.

They said the streets were littered with dead bodies, the stench of which filled the air.

Governments have starting planning to evacuate thousands of foreigners, among them many UN staff.

Japan said on Wednesday that its defence ministry had begun the “necessary preparations” to evacuate around 60 of its nationals from Sudan, including embassy staff.

After the truce collapsed, the army accused the “rebel militia” of failing to commit to it and of continuing “skirmishes around the army headquarters and the airport”.

The RSF in turn accused the army of “committing violations” and breaching the ceasefire by launching “sporadic attacks” on its forces and bases around the capital.

FRANCE 24’s Renouil said that the ongoing “communication war” between the army and the RSF has made it extremely difficult to know exactly what is going on.

“If the RSF publishes a statement saying that they are in control of this or that building and institution, the army publishes another statement saying that ‘no, that’s not the case’ and that they’re [the ones in control]. So it’s impossible to know exactly what is happening on the ground.”

Hospitals being shelled

The fighting has left at least 185 people dead and more than 1,800 injured, according to the United Nations.

But the real figure is thought to be far higher with many wounded unable to reach hospitals, which are themselves being shelled, according to the official doctors’ union.

Deafening explosions rattled buildings, windows and the nerves of many terrified residents who hunkered down hoping for an end to the violence.

Offices and residential buildings in the city have been left with shattered windows and facades riddled with bullets.

Electricity and water are out in many parts of Khartoum, forcing residents to sneak out during lulls in fighting to buy food and supplies, witnesses said.

Derailed transition

The latest violence, during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, came after more than 120 civilians had already been killed in a crackdown on regular pro-democracy demonstrations over the past 18 months.

Both generals have positioned themselves as saviours of Sudan and guardians of democracy—in a country which has known only brief democratic interludes.

Saturday’s outbreak of violence is the culmination of deep-seated divisions between the army and the RSF, which was created in 2013 by longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

Burhan and Dagalo toppled Bashir together in April 2019 following mass protests against his three decades of iron-fisted rule.

They have since been allies with their relationship interspersed with brief periods of tensions.

In October 2021, the two men led a military coup against the civilian government which was installed following Bashir’s ouster, derailing an internationally backed transition.

Burhan, a career soldier from northern Sudan who rose through the ranks under Bashir, has maintained his coup was “necessary” to include more factions into politics.

But Dagalo has since called the coup a “mistake” that failed to bring about change and invigorated Bashir’s remnants.

Source:  AFP

For a third consecutive day, people in Sudan woke up to the ear-splitting sounds of heavy artillery and bombardment by warplanes on Monday as the death toll neared 100 following violent unrest.

According to reports, explosions rocked the Sudanese capital Khartoum Monday amid fierce fighting between the country’s military and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

“The death toll among civilians… has reached 97,” the doctors’ union said, adding later that “dozens” of fighters had been killed and injured.

According to media reports, the figure does not include all casualties as many could not reach hospitals due to difficulties in movement amid the fighting.

The Central Committee of Sudan Doctors, a pro-democracy organization, also reported dozens of deaths among security forces, and some 942 wounded.

The intense conflict, which has seen air strikes, tanks on the streets, artillery fire and heavy gunfire in crowded neighborhoods both in Khartoum and other cities across Sudan, has triggered international demands for an immediate ceasefire.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that “several” of Khartoum’s nine hospitals receiving injured civilians “have run out of blood, transfusion equipment, intravenous fluids and other vital supplies”.

Katharina von Schroeder, a charity worker with Save The Children, who has been sheltering at a school with her son, told BBC they had hoped things would calm down when they arrived in search of shelter, but decided to stay put after clashes in the city escalated and spread to outside the capital.

She noted that several hundred children at least are trapped in similarly dangerous circumstances around Khartoum.

Meanwhile, the UN representative in Sudan on Monday slammed the failure by both the army and rival paramilitary forces to stop fighting during an agreed humanitarian pause to evacuate the wounded.

Volker Perthes said he was “extremely disappointed that humanitarian cessation of hostilities, that both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces had committed to, was only partially honored yesterday”.

Violence erupted in Sudan on Saturday between Sudanese armed forces loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, a paramilitary force led by Sudan’s deputy leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

Hemedti, belonging to a family of camel herders, rose from lowly beginnings to head a widely feared Arab militia that crushed a revolt in Darfur, winning him influence and eventually a role as the country’s second most powerful man, and one of its richest.

He has played a prominent role in his country’s turbulent politics for 10 years, helping topple his one-time benefactor President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and later quashing protests by Sudanese seeking democracy.

As deputy head of state, Hemedti, with little formal education, has taken on some of Sudan’s most important portfolios in the post-Bashir era, including the crumbling economy and peace negotiations with rebel groups.

Source: Presstv

On Friday 14 April, a team of west Africa-based journalists will arrive in Cameroon, one of the most oppressive countries on the continent. Our three colleagues will be there to conduct an “Arizona Project”, named after the events in 1976 when journalists in the US state came together to finish the story that a murdered colleague had been working on. Their motto – “You can kill a journalist, but you cannot kill the story” – applies now more than ever, especially in Cameroon.

What was the story that killed Martinez Zogo, the 50-year-old radio journalist, whose mutilated body was found on 22 January in a suburb of the capital Yaoundé, days after he had been abducted by masked men outside a police station in the city?

What little is known is that Zogo’s story concerned an alleged embezzlement case involving the regime-friendly media tycoon Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga. Belinga was arrested in connection with the murder on 6 February, and on 4 March was officially charged with complicity in torture. Belinga has denied guilt.

This already points to a big difference between events in the US in 1976 and Cameroon in 2023. First, the Arizona journalists would have been able to conduct their investigation with some protection from law enforcement.

The organised crime figures who murdered journalist Don Bolles might have killed once, but police came out in full force to prevent any repeat. In Cameroon, Zogo touched on state corruption, which might imply state-connected forces in his torture and murder. Also, unlike in Arizona, journalists have been murdered in Cameroon before; each had been investigating – or denouncing – embezzlement of state funds enriching a kleptocratic elite.

Crucially, and in contrast to Arizona, a blanket of silence has now descended on Cameroon, terrifying and muzzling citizens and journalists. “We are all afraid to report and our sources are all afraid to talk,” said one Cameroonian member of Naire, the Network of African Investigative Reporters and Editors, which is running this Arizona Project in partnership with Zam magazine. This is why an international team will now pick up the threads of the story Zogo left unfinished.

Sadly, Cameroon is not the only African country experiencing increasing oppression of media and civil society. In the same week that Zogo’s body was found, another journalist was killed in Rwanda, and a human rights lawyer was gunned down in Eswatini. In 2022, close to 60 journalists in Africa were assaulted, imprisoned, abducted or forced into exile.

In practically all these cases, even when arrests are made – which are often temporary – impunity reigns.

No one was ever arrested for the murder of my colleague, Ahmed Hussein-Suale. He was shot dead in my country, Ghana, in 2019, during an investigation of – among others – a politician, Kennedy Agyapong, for corruption. Just before Ahmed was killed, Agyapong exposed him and called for violent action against him on television. He later said he will “never regret showing the pictures” of the undercover journalist.

Agyapong is also behind several actions against me and my media house, Tiger Eye PI, for which Ahmed worked. Having already called for me to be hanged, Agyapong went on national radio and to call me a murderer, a blackmailer and a thief (among other things). His behaviour attracted international condemnation but, more worryingly for me, in the defamation case I brought against Agyapong in the high court, the judge, Justice Baah, was sympathetic to Agyapong in his verdict, finding none of the politician’s insults defamatory and even repeating allegations of criminal conduct against me, as if I were the one on trial.

Agyapong is now a presidential candidate in Ghana. It is in this culture of impunity that I have recently set up the Whistleblowers and Journalist Safety International Centre (WAJSIC) as a shelter organisation. It is already oversubscribed.

The persistent action against me and my colleagues in many African countries is illustrative of the climate we work in. In Senegal, Pape Alé Niang has recently been arrested, detained and harassed for corruption reporting. Theophilus Abbah in Nigeria has been the target of a frivolous lawsuit – a so-called Slapp suit of the type increasingly used against journalists by the rich and powerful. The list goes on.

We as Naire, in partnership with Zam, are conducting the Cameroon Arizona Project in the hope that the world will take note of what individuals such as Agyapong and kleptocratic and oppressive politicians are doing in our countries. They should be investigated, held to account and subject to sanctions. Just limiting their travel, shopping trips to London and New York and their use of stolen money to buy Mediterranean villas will help hearten us as journalists and citizens who yearn for democracy, transparency and good governance in our countries.

We hope that this article, along with the Arizona Project, will focus the attention of international media and civil society on our need for action and support. We hope to publish the results of the Arizona investigation on the Zam website and in partner media worldwide and that members of the media, civil society organisations, NGOs, academic institutions and researchers who want to follow up on the team’s findings, will help to alert global players to our plight and our requests for support.

Culled from The Guardian

Foreign reporters working for France’s ‘Le Monde’ and ‘Libération’ dailies have been expelled from Burkina Faso as part of measures the West African country has taken against French media.

French newspaper Le Monde reported the expulsion on Sunday, saying Burkina had told French correspondents to leave.

“Our correspondent in Burkina Faso, Sophie Douce, has been expelled from the country… at the same time as her colleague from Libération, Agnes Faivre,” Le Monde announced, condemning the move as “arbitrary” and “unacceptable”.

“Libération” also said it “vigorously protests these absolutely unjustified expulsions” and suggested they were linked to an investigation it published earlier in the week.

“The March 27 publication of a Libération investigation into the circumstances in which a video was filmed showing children and adolescents being executed in a military barracks by at least one soldier evidently strongly displeased the junta in power in Burkina Faso,” the paper said.

The Burkina government spokesman said after the piece was published that “the government strongly condemns these manipulations disguised as journalism to tarnish the image of the country”.

The two reporters arrived in Paris early on Sunday after being expelled late on Saturday, Le Monde added.

Also on Monday, Burkina’s ruling junta suspended all broadcasts by the France 24 news channel, after it interviewed the head of Al-Qaeda North Africa.

In December, the Burkina junta suspended Radio France Internationale (RFI), which belongs to the same France Medias Monde group as France 24, accusing the radio station of airing a “message of intimidation” attributed to a “terrorist chief”.

Burkina Faso, which scrapped a 1961 agreement on military assistance with France only weeks after it told the French ambassador and troops to quit the country, is battling extremist militants.

This week we are focusing on the move by Burkina Faso to eject the ambassador of France from the country in response to demands by the masses who believe France is the source of insecurity in this West African country.

Bilateral ties between Burkina Faso and its former colonizer France have been strained following two military coups last year fueled in part by the failure of the government in protecting civilians from terrorist organizations in the Sahel region.

The decade-long militancy has caused significant instability not only in Burkina Faso, but also in neighboring Niger and Mali, the original epicenter of the insurgents.

Both France 24 and RFI, which cover African affairs and broadcast news in former French colonies in Africa, referred to as Françafrique, have been also suspended in Mali.

The militancy has taken on even greater proportions with the spillover effects of the crisis reaching neighboring West African littoral states such as Ivory Coast and Benin.

Source: Presstv

The United States will provide $100 million to Ghana and four other West African countries to help them deal with violent extremism and instability, Vice President Kamala Harris said on Monday during a visit to Ghana.

Harris was in Accra at the start of a week-long, three-nation African tour, the latest in a series of visits by senior U.S. officials as Washington seeks to counter growing Chinese and Russian influence on the continent.

“President Biden and I have made clear the United States is strengthening our partnerships across the continent of Africa,” she said during a joint news conference with Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo.

China has invested heavily in Africa in the last two decades, particularly in infrastructure, mining, timber and fishing, while Russian private military contractor Wagner Group is providing security assistance in several countries.

Akufo-Addo reiterated that he was concerned about Wagner’s presence in West Africa.

“It raises the very real possibility … that once again our continent is going to become the playground for great power conflict,” he said, standing alongside Harris.

Several countries across West Africa and the Sahel region have been struggling to quell Islamist insurgencies that have caused humanitarian disasters and fuelled discontent — contributing factors to military coups in Mali and Burkina Faso.

“We appreciate your leadership in response to recent democratic back-sliding in West Africa,” Harris told Akufo-Addo.

“To help address the threats of violent extremism and instability, today I am pleased to announce $100 million in support of Benin, Ghana, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire and Togo,” she said.

That is in addition to $139 million in bilateral assistance that the United States intends to provide to Ghana in the fiscal year 2024, according to Harris’s office.

Source: Reuters

At least five African migrants died and another 33 were missing after four boats sank off the coast of Tunisia on Wednesday as they tried to cross the Mediterranean to Italy, an official of a local rights group said.

Romadan Ben Omar, the official in the Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights, said that coast guard rescued five migrants who had been on board boats that sank off the coast of the southern city of Sfax, and that they were in a bad psychological condition.

A judicial official told Reuters on Thursday that 33 of the migrants were still missing and the Coast Guard had rescued 84 others.

The coastline of Sfax has become a major departure point for people fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East for a shot at a better life in Europe.

The incident comes amid a significant increase of migration boats from the Tunisian coast toward Italy and in the midst of a campaign by Tunisian authorities of arrests targeting undocumented sub-Saharan African immigration.

According to unofficial United Nations data, 12,000 of those who have reached Italy this year set sail from Tunisia, compared with 1,300 in the same period of 2022. Previously, Libya was the main launch pad for migrants from the region.

Last month, President Kais Saied said in comments widely criticised by rights groups and the African Union that undocumented sub-Saharan African immigration was a conspiracy aimed at changing Tunisia’s demographic make-up.

He ordered security forces to expel any migrants living in Tunisia illegally.

The order had led people to flee the country, even if they previously had no intention of making the dangerous crossing to Europe, a senior official with the United Nations said.

Tunisia is struggling with its worst financial crisis due to the disruption of negotiations with International Monetary Fund for a loan amid fears of default in debt repayment, raising concerns from Europe, especially neighboring Italy.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani previously told Reuters that Rome wanted the IMF to unblock the $1.9 billion loan to Tunisia, fearful that without the cash the country would be destabilised, unleashing a new wave of migrants toward Europe.

Source:  Reuters

More than 400 rebels in Chad were handed life sentences on Tuesday following the death of former ruler Idriss Deby Itno, who was killed in 2021, a public prosecutor told AFP.

After a mass trial, they were sentenced for “acts of terrorism, mercenarism, recruitment of child soldiers and assaulting the head of state,” said Mahamat El-Hadj Abba Nana, prosecutor for the capital N’Djamena.

He did not give a detailed figure for those jailed, saying only that “more than 400 were sentenced” to life, while 24 other defendants were acquitted.

The trial opened last month behind closed doors at Klessoum prison, 20 kilometres (12 miles) southeast of the capital.

In early 2021, the country’s main rebel group, the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), launched an offensive on the north of the country from bases in Libya.

On April 20, the army announced that Marshal Deby, Chad’s iron-fisted ruler for the previous three decades, had died from wounds sustained in the fighting.

His death was announced just a day after he had been declared victor of a presidential election that gave him a sixth term in office.

He was immediately succeeded by one of his sons, General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, who took the helm at the head of a 15-member military junta.

‘A masquerade’

Several defendants were also ordered to pay damages of more than $32 million to the state and $1.6 million to the ex-president’s family, said FACT lawyer Francis Lokoulde, who suggested there would be an appeal.

“It’s a masquerade that follows no law, no convention”, said FACT leader Mahamat Mahdi Ali.

“All that comes from a willingness to criminalise our struggle. The verdict is a non-event,” he said.

Defence lawyers had protested at the very short notice after the mass trial had been announced just days before it started on February 13.

Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno had promised to hold free elections within 18 months, but that deadline was extended for another two years.

Protests last October to mark the initially promised end to military rule met with a deadly crackdown.

The Chadian authorities first put the death toll in the capital at around 50, before updating that figure to 73 deaths. Opposition groups say the number is higher.

The Geneva-based World Organization against Torture (OMCT) accused the Chadian authorities of summary executions and torture.

A total of 262 people were then handed terms of between two and three years after a trial in the notorious Koro Toro prison, isolated in the desert 600 kilometres from N’Djamena.

The remote location and proceedings drew condemnation from international human rights groups.

Human Rights Watch not only denounced the mass trial but also the murders, forced disappearances and torture that preceded it.

The main leaders of Chad’s opposition now live in hiding or in exile, even though the junta lifted a suspension of several opposition parties in January.

Despite criticism of his authoritarian rule, the elder Deby was a key ally in the West’s anti-jihadist campaign in the unstable Sahel, particularly due to the relative strength of Chad’s military.

Source: AFP

Burkina Faso’s revolutionary leader, Thomas Sankara, was reburied Thursday, eight years after his body was exhumed as part of an investigation.

Sankara’s body, and those of the 12 people who died with him, were reburied at the site of his assassination, which has since become a memorial for Sankara featuring a life-size statue of the former leader pumping his fist in the air.

Soldiers and community leaders paid tribute during a ceremony Thursday, some posing for pictures by Sankara’s coffin. All the coffins were draped in Burkina Faso flags with a photo beside them.

Sankara and the others were gunned down in the capital, Ouagadougou, during a 1987 coup and buried hastily, their bodies only allowed to be dug up in 2015, after the ousting of former President Blaise Compaore.

Sankara, a charismatic Marxist leader with a reputation as “Africa’s Che Guevara,” came to power in 1983 at the age of 33 after he and Compaore led a leftist coup that overthrew a moderate military faction. But in 1987, Compaore turned on his former friend in a coup in which he seized power and then ruled the country for 30 years.

Last year, Compaore, who now lives in Ivory Coast, was tried in absentia and convicted of complicity in their murders. A Burkina Faso military tribunal sentenced him to life imprisonment. Compaore’s right-hand man, Gilbert Diendere, and former spy chief Tousma Yacinthe Kafando were also given life sentences. Eight other people were found guilty of a range of charges including giving false testimonies and complicity in undermining state security.

While Sankara’s family was happy that he was finally laid to rest, they said the place of burial was like a slap in the face because of the horrors that occurred there.

“That place is painful for us to put our feet there. A lot of people were tortured there and crimes committed there and murders,” his younger brother Paul Sankara told The Associated Press by phone from the United States where he lives. The family asked the government to bury him elsewhere but was told it was at the army’s discretion since he was a soldier.

The West African nation has been struggling with a jihadi insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group that has killed thousands and displaced nearly 2 million people and sowed division among the population leading to two coups last year. The current junta leader, Capt. Ibrahim Traore, has been likened by some to Sankara, as an anti-imperialist pan-African leader, and is using the reburial to increase support, analysts say.

“With undertaking a symbolic state funeral for Sankara, Traore aims to boost his image by appealing to the collective memory of the young revolutionary leader that still shapes society in Burkina Faso,” said Mucahid Durmaz, senior analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, a global risk intelligence firm.

Source: AP

Suspected jihadists killed 13 people, most of them from the military, in the lastest such attack in Burkina Faso’s restive north, the army said Tuesday. 

Burkina Faso’s State Information Agency posted on its Facebook page that a dozen security officers and a civilian were killed Monday in Falagountou in Burkina Faso’s Sahel region during clashes between the military and jihadis.

Ten military police officers, two members of an auxiliary force supporting the army, and a civilian died as a result of a “terrorist attack on Monday” in the locality of Falangoutou, the army said in a statement.

Ten other military police officers were missing and another five wounded in the attack, the army said.

Fifteen abducted people found dead: governor

The latest attack followed a weekend of violence, when another 20 people were killed in two attacks in the country’s east-central and western regions.

Fifteen people seized by suspected jihadists in western Burkina Faso at the weekend have been found dead, the region’s governor said on Tuesday.

“Fifteen bodies were found on Monday in Linguekoro village in Comoe province,” said Colonel Jean Charles dit Yenapono Somé, governor of the Cascades region, in a statement.

Four people were executed Saturday afternoon when gunmen intercepted their van between Tenkodogo and Ouargaye villages.

On Sunday, a passenger mini-bus coming from the western city of Banfora was intercepted by armed men, said Col. Somé in a statement.

Eight women and one man were freed, the rest of the people were abducted and their lifeless bodies were found with bullet holes the following day, he said.

Armed groups, coups, fleeing civilians

Jihadi violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State Group has ravaged the West African country for years killing thousands and displacing nearly 2 million people. Nearly 5,000 civilians have been killed since 2015, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).

The violence has sowed frustration and distrust among the population and led to two coups last year. The new junta leader, Ibrahim Traoré, seized power in September promising to stem the violence but attacks are increasing.

Traoré has mobilised tens of thousands of civilian fighters to combat the jihadis alongside the army. But analysts says the civilian fighters are accused of targeting other civilians perceived to be working with the jihadis, which is fueling retaliatory attacks.

“The types of mass-atrocities that are occurring were expected, as the conflict was expected to escalate in the coming months due to the increased mobilization of the population through the (volunteer) program and the increasing trend of extrajudicial killings by defence and security forces observed in recent months,” said Héni Nsaibia, senior researcher at ACLED.

“With the increase in state violence and state-sanctioned violence, it is not surprising that militant violence is escalating and further fueling cycles of attacks and retaliation,” he said.

Source: AP