At least 10 churches were torched and one police station vandalised when Nigerian Muslims rioted after a young Christian defaced a copy of Islam’s holy Qur’an, a witness said on Monday. Rioting broke out on Saturday in the religiously mixed northern town of Makarfi, a local resident said by telephone.
The Police Prisons and Civil Rights Union on Monday rejected the police plan to upgrade salaries and packages, saying there was no consultation and that ordinary members were excluded. A spokesperson said the plan lacks transparency because the union was not consulted and therefore did not know what its content entailed.
Heavy rains over parts of the central Karoo at the weekend have inflicted millions of rands of damage to roads and bridges in the region, and caused at least one dam to overflow, the Western Cape government reported on Monday. Communities downstream have been warned about possible flooding.
Talks aimed at ending the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region, which the United Nations says is the world’s worst humanitarian and human rights catastrophe, inched forward in the Chadian capital, Ndjamena, on Monday. More than 10Â 000 people are thought to have died in just more than a year of skirmishes in Darfur.
The National Union of Mineworkers on Monday accused Harmony Gold of callousness in announcing the imminent closure of six shafts, which could cost at least 6Â 300 mineworkers their jobs. ”Harmony is showing their appreciation of the contribution made by black mineworkers through this callous act,” the union said.
United States forces attacked armed Shiite Muslim groups in Baghdad and sealed off the town of Fallujah on Monday after dozens of people died in mounting opposition to their year-old military occupation of Iraq. Apache helicopters sprayed fire on units of the Mehdi Army, the private militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=33715">City under siege after violence</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=33658">Troops clash with Shias</a>
Three days before a major ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of Rwanda’s genocide, men and women gathered around a mass grave between two houses to remove the remains of their loved ones and give them a proper burial.
The United States military deployed 10 tanks on Monday to close off the main road into Baghdad’s Shiite suburb Sadr City after weekend violence by Shiite militants. A day after the worst street fights since the official end of the war, US forces want to prevent supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr from crowding into the district.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=33658">Troops clash with Shias</a>
As the clock ticked away before new immigration regulations come into effect at midnight on Tuesday, litigation challenging the regulations was adjourned in court on Monday. Allegations were made that Minister of Home Affairs Mangosuthu Buthelezi had acted in a mala fide manner by agreeing to a court order to publish the controversial regulations.
About 60 people were injured on Monday when suspected Islamic rebels hurled a hand grenade that exploded in a crowded market near a bus terminal in Indian Kashmir, police said. The rebels tossed the grenade at a passing security force patrol in Pulwama, 30km south of the summer capital, Srinagar, a police spokesperson said.