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

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