Three police officers were killed and two others injured when their vehicle ran over an improvised bomb near Kenya’s eastern border with Somalia, a Kenyan official said Wednesday. The police vehicle was moving from Kula Police Post toward the Liboi border town, North Eastern Regional Coordinator Mohamud Saleh said. He said three other officers were unhurt.

The incident came a day after Kenya’s police chief Joseph Boinnet announced al-Shabab extremists were stepping up attacks in the country. Boinnet said the Somalia-based al-Shabab is under pressure from African Union troops supporting Somalia’s weak government against the extremist group’s insurgency.

Al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack in a report by its news agency and said it had killed at least five Kenyan police officers, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist groups. In the last two weeks, attacks by al-Shabab in Kenya’s Garissa and Mandera counties have increased after a lull. Last week, an improvised bomb killed four people in a vehicle, including a minor.

Mandera County has been hardest hit in recent years by an al-Shabab campaign to avenge Kenyan troop presence in Somalia since 2011. Kenya’s troops are part of the AU force in Somalia. Kenya has managed to stop the frequency of al-Shabab attacks in its capital, Nairobi, and major towns, but human rights groups say the government uses methods such as extrajudicial killings that can fuel revenge attacks.

(Source: AP)

An organized crime group from the Central African Republic is spreading terror in the nation’s capital Yaoundé. Hundreds of Cameroonian students were victims of aggression by armed gangs at a place known as “Rail-Ngousso”, during a sporting event. The Central African Republic militia men arrived on board motorcycles armed with machetes, knives and guns and attacked students, robbing them of their cell phones, purses and various objects under the helpless gaze of the only policeman committed to surveillance, but unarmed.

Cameroon Concord News understands some of the victims of the Tuesday attack were rushed to the Gynecological Hospital in Ngousso. Our informant hinted that “One of them, even died.” According to police sources in, the attack carries the DNA of militiamen from the Central African Republic who are residing in Yaoundé as refugees.

A journalist with a sister publication, Cameroon Intelligence Report revealed that among the more than 265,000 Central African refugees gathered in Cameroon are many militiamen, accustomed to the use of firearms and heavy weapons.

A angry police boss was quoted as saying that “Cameroon does not offer enough opportunities to its own children. What opportunities can she offer these Central African refugees?”  The senior police officer who sued for anonymity was again heard murmuring privately that what was Biya thinking to have accepted 265,000 foreigners to come and live here?

Cameroon has now become the sleeping cells for Central African Republic armed gangs as Douala and Yaounde are witnessing an increasing crime rate.  The members of the CAR sleeping cells were recruited from the Seleka and Anti Balaka militia. Without activities, these “refugees” engage in gangs and armed attacks, which are now, worrying the Cameroonians and could be at the origin of the rise of Xenophobia.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Cameroon Concord News

The Cameroonian military has confirmed the arrest of eight of its soldiers in Chad by the Chadian army. The members of the Rapid Intervention Battalion were picked up in Mayo Kebi-East; a region located more than 300 km south of the Chadian capital Ndjamena.

The communications department at the Ministry of Defense in Yaoundé refused to provide details of the incident but hoped for a happy outcome.

Yaoundé and Ndjamena have good relations and are fighting together against the Nigerian sect Boko Haram, which has pledged allegiance to the organization of the Islamic state and now calls itself the Islamic province of West Africa.

According to our sources, the arrested soldiers were part of a detachment operating under the banner of the Joint Multinational Force in Lake Chad. The troops were inside a Toyota pick-up vehicle before they were rounded up by elements of the Chadian army.

Cameroon Concord News gathered that the soldiers entered Chad without an order of mission from their hierarchy. Negotiations are underway for the Cameroonian troops to gain their freedom.

By Sama Ernest

An average of 4,600 people flee their homes every day in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN says, warning of a dramatically deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country. A full 3.7 million people were displaced within DR Congo by the end of March – more than double the 1.6 million at the start of 2016, the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA said. “This is a massive, massive deterioration,” Rein Paulsen, who heads OCHA’s country office in DR Congo, told reporters in Geneva.

The situation is particularly dire in the central Kasai region, where spiraling violence between government troops and tribal militias has forced 1.27 million people from their homes since last September, he said. “That’s an increase of 100,000 in the last week,” Paulsen said, describing the numbers as “shocking and dramatic.”

The fighting in Kasai erupted after government troops last August killed tribal chief Jean Pierre Mpandi, also known as Kamwina Nsapu, who had launched an uprising against President Joseph Kabila. Violence in the region has left at least 400 people dead since September. The UN has meanwhile reported finding 40 mass graves, while two UN researchers – Michael Sharp, an American, and Zaida Catalan, a dual Swedish-Chilean national – investigating the violence were abducted and shot dead. One of the victims was also beheaded.

Source: AFP

A Cameroonian senator, Francois-Xavier Ondo has reportedly extorted the sum of 465 million FCFA from a senior political figure and aide to the Head of State of Equatorial Guinea in one of the biggest 419 scams in the country’s history.

Edjo Avomo Melchor Esono, a former Minister and current senator in Equatorial Guinea was rolled by his Cameroonian notary named Francois-Xavier Ondo and collected the sum of 465 million CFA francs, destined for the acquisition of a piece of land in Yaoundé. To this day not only that the Guinean senator has not been able to take possession of the land he solicited, the worst is that Edjo Avomo Melchor Esono has also not recovered the funds made available to his Cameroonian colleague.

The Biya acolyte claimed that he was attacked by armed robbers and the money washed away in Yaounde.  Several requests for the waiver of immunity from François-Xavier Menye Ondo by the Equatorial Guinea Chancellery in the Senate office have met with a stone wall with President Biya maintaining a kind of deliberate silence. The Equatorial Guinean politician was quoted saying that “Biya is sheltering thieves.”

By Rita Akana

Cameroon Concord News

Tanzanian President John Magufuli on Friday fired nearly 10,000 civil servants accused of having falsified academic qualifications to get their jobs. The civil servants have been given 15 days to leave their jobs or risk jail terms of up to seven years.

Speaking in the capital, Dodoma, Magufuli described the 9,932 officials as “robbers and shoplifters” and ordered them to “immediately disappear from their work stations.” “The 9,932 employees recruited on the basis of false diplomas will not receive their salary for this month of April and have to leave their positions immediately,” Magufuli said. He added that the posts would be filled by “qualified persons” as soon as possible and called on local media to publish the names of those fired.

The officials had been implicated by an independent evaluation that sought to determine the validity of the academic papers of public employees in Tanzania. The evaluation followed a countrywide crackdown on phantom workers on the public payroll. Since winning elections in 2015, Magufuli has strengthened his reputation for fighting corruption with decisions many see as aimed at improving service delivery.

Source: Presstv

Deadly violence between government forces and tribal militias in DR Congo’s central Kasai region has forced more than a million people from their homes over the past eight months, the UN said Friday. The fighting erupted after government troops last August killed tribal chief Jean Pierre Mpandi, also known as Kamwina Nsapu, who had launched an uprising against President Joseph Kabila.

Yvon Edoumou of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it had registered 1.09 million internally displaced people in the region as of April 1. Violence in other areas of the country, including the North and South Kivu provinces, has forced an additional two million to flee their homes, he told AFP.

“These people are mainly fleeing clashes between the FARDC (DR Congo’s armed forces) and armed groups, or between armed groups,” he said, adding that about 40 local and international aid groups were helping to cope with the crisis.

The UN has accused the Nsapu rebellion of using child soldiers and committing several atrocities, while also denouncing the disproportionate use of force by the military. The UN has reported finding 40 mass graves in the Kasai region, and the bodies of two UN researchers investigating the violence were found in a grave 16 days after they were abducted last month.

Presstv

The United Nations says its investigators have discovered 17 mass graves in the central Democratic Republic of the Congo, increasing the number to 40 documented in an area that witnessed clashes between the army and a local militia. The UN said in a statement issued on Wednesday that the graves were reportedly dug by Congolese army after fighting with Kamuina Nsapu militia in Kasai Central province in late March.

“At least 74 people, including 30 children, were reported to have been killed by soldiers as a result of these clashes,” the statement added. The government has not commented on the report, but it has previously rejected the notion that soldiers have used disproportionate force against militia fighters and claimed the militia had dug the sites.

The Kamuina Nsapu uprising has become the most serious threat to President Joseph Kabila, whose refusal to step down following a defeat in the latest polls stoked chaos in the vast central African country. Kabila’s presidential term expired on December 19, 2016, but ruling officials have effectively prolonged his mandate until 2018, claiming that the government would not be able to arrange elections before then.

The government of Kabila reportedly reached an agreement with opposition parties to end the political crisis in the country over his decision to stay in power. Under the accord struck on December 30, 2016, by political parties in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kabila will leave office following elections due to be held by the end of 2017.  The fighting between Congolese troops and militia has escalated after government forces killed their chief tribal leader, Kamuina Nsapu, in late August 2016. More than 400 people have been killed since then.

Source: Presstv

Armed men have attacked Egyptian security forces close to the St. Catherine Monastery in the country’s Sinai Peninsula, killing one police officer and wounding four more.

The Daesh terrorist group claimed responsibility for the Tuesday attack on the security checkpoint, which is situated some 800 meters from the monastery.

St. Catherine is one of the world’s most important Christian sites and was built in the late 6th century and is registered as a UNESCO world heritage site.

The incident comes just over one week after the Takfiri terrorist group claimed responsibility for two deadly bombings on Christian churches in the country.

Nearly two dozen people have been killed in a fire that tore through a religious ceremony southeast of Senegal. Government spokesman Seydou Gueye said Thursday that the fire had engulfed a Muslim spiritual retreat in Medina Gounass village a day earlier, killing 22 and wounding several others. Local media reported that makeshift shelters and strong winds helped the fire spread, but there was no report on the cause of the incident.

A senior official with the firefighting service said the fire broke out around noon local time as worshippers gathered for the retreat, adding that some were hurt in a crush triggered by the blaze. Others said 20 of the injured were in critical conditions and were receiving treatment at the regional hospital in Tambacounda city, about 80 kilometers away.

Witnesses said all straw shelters constructed for the religious event were completely burnt in the fire and only modern tents were relatively spared from the fury of the flames. “The fire burned through everything in its path,” said a resident. Images circulated online showed billowing smoke, charred corpses of animals and burnt-out cars.

President Macky Sall held a press conference and offered condolences to the victims’ families. Reports said he was due to visit the site of the blaze later on Thursday. Senegal’s interior minister had already paid a visit to the site. Thousands of men from Senegal, Guinea and other West African countries attend the annual spiritual gathering in Medina Gounass.

A similar incident in the area in 2010 killed six people. Nine children were also killed in a blaze in 2013 in a religious school, prompting an outcry in the Muslim-majority Senegal.

Source Presstv