At least 56 people were killed and 30 were seriously injured when a bus plunged over an embankment southwest of Asmara in what authorities believe was one of Eritrea’s worst road accidents, the state news agency Erina reported late on Monday. The bus, which police believe may have been overloaded, was travelling between the towns of Adi Quala and Maimene in southern Eritrea.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has called for the Security Council to visit both Eritrea and Ethiopia to help solve their longstanding border deadlock, according to a UN statement. Annan ”has called on the Security Council to advance the resolution of the boundary dispute by visiting both Horn of Africa countries,” said a statement.
Nearly a decade after accidentally discovering a previously unknown language on an Indian Ocean archipelago off the Eritrean coast, a French linguist is fighting to save the unwritten, untaught tongue. Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle and colleague Martine Vanhove found Dahlak island fishermen conversing in the unusual vernacular nine years ago.
The United Nations World Food Programme has decided to extend its emergency food-aid programme in Eritrea to mitigate the effects of drought, said Jean-Pierre Cebron, WFP’s country director for Eritrea. Cebron said the extension of WFP’s emergency activities was intended to provide food aid to around 840 000 people.
Eritrea launched a national campaign on Monday that aims to vaccinate about 500 000 children across the country against polio, a United Nations official said. Eritrea has had no confirmed cases of polio since 1997, but cases have been recorded recently in neighbouring Ethiopia and Sudan.
Eritrea on Friday strongly denied allegations it is massing troops along its border with Sudan, rejecting as ”groundless” reported statements to that effect made by a Sudanese official. ”It’s a groundless accusation, a total fabrication,” said Yemane Gebremeskel, director of Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki’s office.
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/ 10 February 2005
Eritrea is to demand the return from Ethiopia of hundreds of archeological artefacts taken from ancient sites in the 1960s, an official said on Thursday, threatening a new row between the feuding Horn of Africa neighbours. Asmara also will petition Italy for the return of objects it says were taken by Italian nationals.
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/ 10 December 2004
Eritrea and Ethiopia could go to war again if the long-running border dispute between the two Horn of Africa nations is not settled, a senior Eritrean official warned on Thursday. ”We’ve been patient, but the current situation is not sustainable indefinitely,” Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki’s chief of staff said in Asmara.
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/ 7 December 2004
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki on Tuesday rejected an Ethiopian peace proposal made in late November, in what was his first declaration on the issue, an official statement said. The Ethiopian proposal ”contains no new developments” and it would ”drag the peace process another step backwards,” he insisted in a statement published by the Eritrean information ministry.
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/ 3 December 2004
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Unmee) began scaling down the size of its force this week, a spokesperson announced. On September 14, the UN Security Council extended Unmee’s mandate until March next year but called for a reduction in its size, so as to reduce its annual budget of around -million.
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/ 29 October 2004
A ship transporting 61 200 tonnes of wheat arrived at the Eritrean port of Massawa on the Red Sea on Friday to help about 600 000 people affected by drought, the United Nations World Food Programme said in a statement. The wheat will assist two-thirds of Eritrea’s population unable to meet daily food needs.
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/ 22 October 2004
Relations between fractious neighbours Asmara and Khartoum reached a new low this week after Eritrea claimed to have uncovered a Sudanese-backed plot to assassinate President Issaiais Afeworki. Its announcement that it had arrested a ”terrorist” cell allegedly deployed to attack civilians as well as kill Afeworki sparked a furious reaction from Sudan.
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/ 19 October 2004
Eritrea on Monday accused the Sudanese leadership of plotting to assassinate Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki, raising the stakes in a months-long series of charges and counter-charges. Khartoum ”continues to step up its attempts to disrupt peace and stability in Eritrea”, Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu Ahmed said.
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/ 15 October 2004
Eritrea said on Friday that it has suspended sales of petrol due to soaring oil prices on the world market. The sale of petrol has been suspended since Wednesday afternoon ”in the wake of ever-increasing oil prices on the world market,” in a bid to curb consumption in the Horn of Africa country, which imports all its refined fuel products, said Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu Ahmed in Asmara.
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/ 29 September 2004
Draped in white shawls, thousands of Asmarinos thronged September Square, the largest in the Eritrean capital, to mark the Meskel, the highlight of the orthodox religious calendar, which commemorates the discovery of Christ’s cross by Saint Helen. About half of Eritrea’s four million inhabitants are Orthodox Christians, according to the government.
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/ 23 September 2004
Several foreign mining companies working in Eritrea, ordered by the government on September 2 to close, are still waiting for explanations, Mines Director General Alem Kibreab said on Wednesday. ”We have told them to wait patiently and they have agreed,” Alem said from Asmara.
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/ 21 September 2004
Eritrea has criticised as ”out of place” portions of last week’s United Nations Security Council resolution that renewed the mandate of a peacekeeping force deployed on its border with Ethiopia, saying it ”places both the law-abiding party [Eritrea] and the one that completely violates international law [Ethiopia] on an equal footing”.
About 1,9-million Eritreans currently in need of food aid could suffer even more because the world has shifted its focus to other crises such as Darfur in western Sudan, the United Nations has warned. Eritrea grew only 20% of the food it needed last year and has asked the international community for $120-million to offset the shortfall.
The repatriation of one of Africa’s oldest refugee populations from Sudan to Eritrea is expected to be completed by the end of this year, the United Nations refugee agency said. Many of the refugees have lived in eastern Sudan for more than 30 years, having fled fighting and famine during Eritrea’s long independence war.
Barely a quarter of the -million sought by the United Nations for humanitarian assistance for 1,9-million drought-affected Eritreans this year has been provided by the international community, the UN has lamented. ”The overall response is 25,7%,” said UN resident humanitarian coordinator Simon Nhongo on Thursday.
The United Nations secretary general’s special envoy for the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, is in the Eritrean capital to assess the situation in the country, UN sources said on Thursday. Ahtisaari will have talks with Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki, among others.
The United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) has complained to the authorities in Asmara of ”serious restrictions of freedom of movement” imposed on its peacekeepers. UNMEE patrols a buffer corridor on the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea in line with a peace accord the Horn of Africa states signed.
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/ 21 November 2003
The Eritrean government on Friday announced it was recalling its Ambassador to the African Union because of its ”failure” to condemn Ethiopia’s ”gross violations” of the existing peace agreement.
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/ 13 November 2003
International backing is vital if Eritrea is to succeed in reducing poverty and ensuring adequate food supplies for its people, the UN special envoy for the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa has said.
Rigged like American youth with caps glued to their heads and baggy trousers like rappers, the young Eritreans from the diaspora returning to Eritrea in their thousands each summer do not go unnoticed in the streets of Asmara.
Seven Irish soldiers with the UN mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea (Unmee) are under investigation in a prostitution scandal involving girls as young as 15 in Eritrea, according to officials.