Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi blamed the opposition and the international community for a political crisis that has seen scores killed and jailed since elections a year ago. Meles, in an interview with British newspaper The Times published on Monday, said the opposition was encouraged by mixed signals from the international community.
Columns of feuding, heavily armed fighters patrolled the divided streets of Mogadishu’s northern Sisi neighbourhood on Monday after a week of the deadliest violence in the Somali capital for 15 years. Residents in Sisi, which has borne the brunt of the fighting that erupted a week ago, said it has been effectively carved into two distinct sections.
One of the accused in the Boeremag treason trial on Monday blamed police for the disappearance of two of his co-accused as police announced new and stringent security measures at the resumption of the trial. Herman van Rooyen and Rudi Gouws disappeared from court during a lunch break two weeks ago.
An alleged coup plot against President Robert Mugabe was to be carried out in two phases with the first phase seeing the ouster of vice-president Joseph Msika and Zanu-PF chairperson John Nkomo, the High Court heard on Friday. The trial entered its fourth day on Friday.
European Union defence ministers were on Monday seeking to fill gaps in the military force they are planning to send to the Democratic Republic Congo in support of United Nations peacekeepers during key elections across the vast African nation.
The African Union on Monday gave two hold-out Darfur rebel groups a 24-hour deadline to sign a peace deal with Khartoum or face United Nations sanctions. AU commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare said the pan-African body would ask the UN Security Council to slap sanctions on the the two groups unless they signed the deal by Tuesday.
Cellular services provider MTN Group has recorded a 55% year-on-year growth in subscribers in its operations to 24 185 000, the company said in a statement on Monday. This represents a 4% increase since the last reported period ended December 31 2005, the group said.
Police in the Zimbabwean capital Harare have rounded up more than 10Â 000 squatters and street children and plan to send them to rural areas, reports said on Monday. Under a fresh clean-up operation codenamed Round-Up, the police netted 10Â 224 people, many of them vagrants, touts and what the authorities call ”disorderly elements”.
The road to peace in Sudan’s strife-torn western region of Darfur remains long, experts say, with deep tribal differences yet to be overcome and a near-impossible disarmament task. A peace agreement was reached ten days ago in Abuja between the Sudanese government and the largest faction of the main Darfur rebel group, raising hopes of an end to the bloodshed.
As Mount Merapi starts to spew deadly heat clouds down its flank, fear is beginning to grip residents living in the shadow of the rumbling volcano. The appearance of the ”shaggy goats”, as the locals call the searing clouds of volcanic gases, ash and dust, brings back terrible memories of Merapi’s last eruption in November 1994.