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.

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At least 21 people have been killed and more than 50 others injured in an explosion that hit an area near a church in the northern Egyptian city of Tanta, sources say. State television confirmed the explosion on Sunday but the cause of the blast is yet unknown. Provincial governor Ahmad Deif told state television that the explosion occurred inside the church. “Either a bomb was planted or someone blew himself up,” Deif said.

The sources added that there was a second blast near the city’s police academy. Egypt has been facing violence due to terrorist attacks across the country in the past years. The Takfiri Velayat Sinai terrorist group has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks. The group, previously known as Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, was founded in 2011, and in mid-2013, it began a campaign of deadly attacks against Egyptian security forces.

Militants have been taking advantage of the turmoil caused in Egypt after the country’s democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted by the military in July 2013. Velayat Sinai has killed hundreds of soldiers and police officers, particularly in the Sinai Peninsula, since then. In November 2014, it pledged allegiance to the Daesh terrorist group, which is mainly active in Syria and Iraq, and renamed itself again as Daesh-Velayat Sinai Province.

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Up to 10,000 refugees stranded in Libya will be flown back to their home countries this year, but the returns can only play a limited role in tackling migrant flows toward Europe, the head of the UN migration agency’s Libyan office said. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) program is one of the few ways EU states can fund action inside lawless Libya, which has become the main migration departure point for Europe, as they scramble to stem record flows across the central Mediterranean.

Other plans have been held up by poor security, political resistance and a lack of government control in Libya, where powerful militias and smuggling networks act with impunity. The IOM scheme is meant to offer a way out to those stuck in Libya without money, work, or a means to move on, said Othman Belbeisi, the agency’s chief of mission for Libya. It is voluntary, with each refugee interviewed individually and able to change their mind at any time.

“This program provides a window or an option for these people to go back home and start a new life,” Belbeisi told Reuters. “It is a contribution to a solution, mainly for the refugees. We don’t believe in closing borders, stopping movement or stopping migration.”

Some of those who opt to return have been intercepted by the Libyan coastguard at sea and sent to detention centers. Some leave without trying to reach Europe. Most do not have documents. The IOM flew 2,775 refugees back last year, and is expecting to increase that number to between 7,000 and 10,000 in 2017, with new European funding.

This year, 1,795 refugees have already been sent back, and another 5,000 are seeking assistance to return. The agency has received a higher rate of requests since late 2016, something Belbeisi attributed to worsening conditions inside Libya.

Most are flown to West Africa, with Nigeria, Senegal and Mali topping the list. There have also been returns to East Africa and Bangladesh. Because returning can be seen as a failure, the IOM supports reintegration in home communities, Belbeisi said, with half those returned last year receiving such help. The average cost of returning and assisting a refugee is about 2,000 euros ($2,135). Funding for the program comes mainly from European states.

The agency still faces challenges interviewing refugees, checking their identity, and transporting them across and out of Libya. It plans to raise awareness about the returns program in the coming months, without actively promoting it.

“We are not promoting a return home because we know sometimes the situation back home can be even worse … and we do not want to promote shifting a problem from one side, or country, to another,” said Belbeisi. “That’s why we don’t advertise the program or promote it as a solution for migration to Europe.”

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A Gambian man rescued from a refugee vessel sunken in the Mediterranean has told the United Nations officials that around 150 were on board when the ship capsized off Libya. The UN refugee agency said Wednesday that some 146 refugees, among them children and several pregnant women, were feared missing after the capsizing, which purportedly occurred earlier this week.

The agency said the Gambian man was interviewed in a hospital in the Italian island of Lampedusa after he was spotted almost by accident by a Spanish military ship sailing in the Mediterranean as part of a European Union operation to crack down on smugglers. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said the Spanish ship had found the man while he was desperately holding on a fuel can to survive.

The Gambian told a member of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that the refugee vessel, which left on Sunday or Monday from Sabratha, western Libya, began taking on water a few hours after setting off. He said passengers included refugees from Nigeria, Mali and The Gambia.

A deal between the EU and Turkey in March last year forced many to dare the risky journey through the Central Mediterranean from Libya to Italy. Smugglers have also benefited from the chaos and lawlessness in Libya to dispatch more people on board unsafe dinghies.

More than 23,000 refugees have managed to make it to the Italian shores since the beginning of 2017, Italian authorities say. The IOM says 590 refugees have died or gone missing along the Libyan coast, without considering the figure from the recent disaster.

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Celebrated South African anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, a Robben Island prisoner and one of Nelson Mandela’s closest colleagues in the struggle against white rule, died early Tuesday aged 87.

Kathrada was among those tried and jailed alongside Mandela in the Rivonia trial in 1964, which drew worldwide attention to the brutalities of the apartheid regime. He died in hospital in Johannesburg after a short illness following brain surgery, his charity foundation said.

Kathrada spent 26 years and three months in prison, 18 of which were on Robben Island, the notorious jail off the coast of Cape Town.

After the end of apartheid, he served from 1994 to 1999 as parliamentary counselor to President Mandela in the first African National Congress (ANC) government.

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu described Kathrada as “a man of remarkable gentleness, modesty and steadfastness,” hailing him a moral leader of the anti-apartheid movement.

“These were people of the highest integrity and moral fibre who, through their humility and humanity, inspired our collective self-worth -– and the world’s confidence in us,” Tutu said in a statement.

Culled from Concisenews

Descendants of two Namibian tribes who suffered one of the most horrific genocides under Germany’s colonial rule more than a century ago have now lodged a complaint against Berlin in a New York court. Lawyers representing Namibia’s Herero and Nama tribes and an American non-profit association on genocide were to appear in the court on Thursday as part of a class-action lawsuit, which seeks reparations from Germany for the mass killing of tens of thousands of people and other crimes by German settlers and troops from 1904 to 1908.

Germany has admitted that genocide took place but it has yet to make an official declaration. Berlin also refuses to pay direct reparations, saying it has generously supported Namibia’s development programs since the country’s independence from South Africa in 1990 through paying hundreds of millions of euro. The original lawsuit was brought against Germany in January under the Alien Tort Statute that allows investigations of international law violations against non-US citizens by American courts. Besides seeking reparations, the plaintiffs also demand that they be represented in negotiations between Germany and Namibia on the genocide. They say their exclusion from the talks is a violation of the UN declaration on the indigenous people.

The lawsuit claims that German colonial authorities explicitly consented to settlers’ seizure of a quarter of Herero and Nama lands — about thousands of square miles — from 1885 to 1903. Historic documents suggest that around 65,000 Herero people were massacred in the bloody Battle of Waterberg in August 1904. Around 10,000 people from the Nama tribe were also killed after they sought to rebel against the Germans during the conflict. Germany and Namibia have been in talks over the massacres but Berlin is yet to release any details of the deal being negotiated.

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Moussa Faki Mahamat, the new chair of the African Union Commission (AUC), takes office in mid-March as the continent faces its worst spate of humanitarian crises since the 1990s. The most alarming is in the Lake Chad basin where more than eleven million people need emergency aid. In Somalia, 6.2 million (almost half the population) face acute food shortages and in South Sudan, where the UN recently declared a famine, nearly 5 million are severely food insecure. The suffering is largely man-made: the effects of drought have been exacerbated by prolonged wars and mass displacement.

More promisingly, Gambia’s peaceful transition, negotiated by the Economic Community of West African States with AU support, is one of the steps toward democracy and rule of law being taken in much of the continent. Whether these gains can be multiplied across Africa depends on how well Mr Faki, Chad’s former foreign minister, will use the tools at his disposal to persuade member states to address the triggers and longer-term drivers of conflict: fraught electoral processes; leaders who refuse to leave office as scheduled; corrupt, authoritarian or repressive governments; population growth; joblessness and climate change. These same forces precipitate two other major continental challenges, migration and the threat from religious extremists and other violent non-state groups.

International Crisis Group

The death toll from a landslide at Ethiopia’s largest rubbish dump reached 82 on Tuesday as the country’s parliament declared three days of national mourning, a government minister said. Communications Minister Negeri Lencho said, rescuers are still searching for survivors and victims’ bodies.

Part of the largest hill at the Koshe rubbish dump in the capital Addis Ababa gave way on Saturday, swallowing up a slum that had been built on the trash and burying families alive in their homes. Most of the dead are women and children. Rescuers on Tuesday pulled a woman alive from the rubble more than two days after the disaster, said Dagmawit Moges, a spokeswoman for the Addis Ababa city administration. Starting Wednesday, flags in Ethiopia will fly at half-mast as the country observes three days of mourning for the victims.

The Koshe landfill has for more than 40 years been the main garbage dump for Addis Ababa. Hundreds of people lived at the landfill on the outskirts of the capital, collecting recyclables trucked in from neighborhoods around the city of about four million people. The government tried last year to close the dump and move it to a different location, but opposition from residents at the new site forced the authorities to back down.

Residents blamed the landslide on the construction of a new biogas facility on top of the rubbish. Lencho rejected that claim, saying slum dwellers had caused the collapse by digging into the soil to find rubbish to sell.

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An attack on a police post west of Niger has left at least four officers dead. A security source said Monday that the attack, which took place a day earlier, struck Wanzarbe, a town located in the western region of Tillaberi.

“The provisional toll is four police officers killed in a clear terrorist attack on Sunday night,” said the source, adding that the assault targeted a police station. The government of Niger on Saturday declared a state of emergency in Tillaberi and other areas near the country’s border with Mali and Burkina Faso.

Tillaberi and neighboring Tahoua region have witnessed several deadly attacks by militants from MUJAO, a terror outfit mainly operating in West Africa region. Most of those attacks have targeted army posts and refugee camps, including a late February assault in Ouallam, Tillaberi, which killed 16 soldiers and wounded 18 others.

Last October, a daring attack on a refugee camp in Tahoua also left 22 soldiers dead. Officials say at least 43 people were killed in militant attacks in Tillaberi and Tahoua between October 2016 and February this year. Niger is a northern neighbor to Nigeria, where the Boko Haram Takfiri terror group launched bloody militancy against the government seven years ago.

More than 20,000 people have been killed in the insurgency, which has also spread to neighboring countries of Niger, Chad and Cameron.

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Police in South Africa have used rubber bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas to scatter people clashing at rival rallies by locals and refugees.

Hundreds of nationals and non-nationals were rallying in separate marches in the capital, Pretoria, on Friday. Police forces had formed lines to keep the two crowds apart. Clashes erupted nevertheless.

The refugees were from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Somalia, and Pakistan. Violence has emerged against refuges in South Africa in recent weeks. Locals have looted and torched houses and shops belonging to the refugees.

President Jacob Zuma said in a statement on Friday that there had been “threats of violence and acts of intimidation and destruction of property directed at non-nationals.”

“Residents in some communities blame non-nationals for the escalating crimes especially drug trafficking,” the president said, calling on South Africans not to blame migrants for the country’s widespread crime problems, but said the government would crack down on drug-dealing and illegal immigrants.

According to reports, local citizens targeted more than 20 shops in Atteridgeville, outside Pretoria, over the last week. Residents in Rosettenville, south of Johannesburg, also attacked at least 12 houses.

“We have decided to not to leave the house [during the anti-migrant march],” said Alain Bome, 47, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who has been in South Africa for 14 years. “We know very well there have been attacks. We are scared because we know South Africans.”

The rise in violence prompted the Nigerian government this week to call for the African Union to step in to stop the “xenophobic attacks” on its citizens in South Africa. Nigeria says at least 20 of its nationals were killed in South Africa last year.

South African authorities, however, rejected the number, saying many violent deaths in the country had occurred due to victims’ own criminal activity. South Africans blame refugees for the country’s near-record unemployment, accusing them of taking jobs from citizens and engaging in crimes.

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