Ethiopia

Shivering under a tattered blanket, a young woman tries to sleep at the foot of the mist-shrouded Entoto Mountain, north of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. ”I decided to come to Entoto to seek a cure from the holy water after a doctor told me that I am HIV-positive,” Abebech Alemu (35) said.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Thursday said his country had completed preparations for war with a powerful Somali Islamic movement after efforts for dialogue failed. Meles said the Islamists, who have declared a holy war on Ethiopian troops deployed to protect the weak Somali government, represented a clear threat to his country.

Ethiopia and Eritrea on Monday rejected a proposal put forward by an independent boundary commission as a way around a four-year impasse over the demarcation of their shared border. The Horn of Africa neighbors fought a war from 1998 to 2000 over a frontier area of dusty villages and scrubby plains during which 70 000 people were killed.

The African Union on Saturday reported a heavy civilian toll after Sudanese forces and allied militia this week conducted raids in the war-ravaged western region of Darfur. The AU Mission in Sudan reported a ”heavy toll on the civilian population”.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan opened high-level talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Thursday with senior African Union officials to seek solutions to the crisis in Sudan’s troubled western Darfur region. But prospects for the meeting reaching consensus on a way forward remained unclear.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan pledged on Thursday to work to improve welfare in Africa, the world’s poorest continent, after he retires from his position later this year. On his last tours in Africa as the world body’s chief, Annan told participants at the fifth African Development Forum in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, that his farewell was ”not an adieu, but very much an au revoir”.

The African Union on Tuesday hailed the generally peaceful conduct of the second-round presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and called for calm as the vast nation awaits final results. In a statement released in Ethiopia, AU Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare welcomed ”the smooth conduct of the second round of the presidential election in the DRC”.

Four days of devastating floods along Ethiopia’s desolate eastern border have killed more than 60 people, and prowling crocodiles were hampering rescue efforts as rain continued to fall, officials said on Tuesday. The floods began on Friday when the Shebelle River overflowed its banks in the Ogaden region, more than 1 000km from the capital, Addis Ababa.

An Ethiopian parliamentary probe has determined the death toll from post-election violence last year was triple the government’s earlier figure but found no evidence of excessive force by authorities, officials said on Thursday. A panel investigating two explosions of unrest after the disputed May 2005 polls said 199 people died, more than three times the original official number of 54.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Tuesday Ethiopia was ”technically” at war with Somalia’s Islamists because they had declared jihad on his nation. ”The jihadist elements within the Islamic Court movement are spoiling for a fight. They’ve been declaring jihad against Ethiopia almost every other week,” Meles told Reuters in an interview. ”Technically we are at war.”

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Thursday urged Eritrea and rebel groups he said it supports to talk peace and stop trying to destabilise his Horn of Africa country. The United Nations said Eritrea’s decision to move troops and tanks into a United Nations buffer zone between the two countries was a ”major breach” of a 2000 peace agreement.

South African President Thabo Mbeki has ended his mediation role in Côte d’Ivoire’s political crisis and a regional body recommended that the heads of the African Union and a West African body replace him. ”President Mbeki’s mediation role in Cote d’Ivoire has ended upon his own request,” African Union chairperson Denis Sassou Nguesso said on Tuesday.

Ethiopia said on Tuesday that Eritrea’s deployment of troops and tanks to a demilitarised buffer zone along their border was just the latest in series of violations of a 2000 truce. Addis Ababa said it was ”carefully monitoring” the situation in the so-called Temporary Security Zone along the frontier.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo warned of a possible genocide in the Darfur region on Tuesday, as cash-strapped African peacekeepers struggle to stem the violence in Sudan’s remote west. Nigeria is the largest troop-contributing nation to the African Union (AU) force in Darfur, which is caught in an international diplomatic tug-of-war over a United Nations takeover of the peacekeeping mission.

The African Union needs increased United Nations support if it is to continue its peacekeeping operation in Darfur, European Commission aid chief Louis Michel said on Monday. ”In the current situation, the AU cannot assume completely the job if it does not have an important contribution from the UN.,” Michel told reporters at the AU headquarters.

Europe will give tens of millions in additional aid to the cash-strapped African Union when European Union commissioners make a landmark visit to the bloc’s headquarters next week, officials said on Tuesday. As the pan-African body struggles to keep afloat and expand its peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, the European Commission will donate â,¬55-million.

The death toll from a diarrhoea epidemic in Ethiopia has climbed to at least 182, with nearly 20 000 others infected since the outbreak erupted in June, the United Nations said on Tuesday. The UN humanitarian agency said the disease had spread to five Ethiopian regions that were ravaged by devastating floods.

Devastating floods are continuing to ravage large parts of Ethiopia since heavy rains first burst river banks last month, unleashing killer torrents of water, the United Nations said this week. Across the country, flooding has affected about 357 000 people, more than 136 000 of whom are homeless.

Ethiopia said it has arrested nine members of a rebel hit squad that was planning to assassinate government leaders, state media reported on Friday. The suspects were working for the rebel Oromo Liberation Front, which has been fighting for greater autonomy in southern Ethiopia, the National Intelligence and Security Service said.

Ethiopia on Friday appealed for at least -million to help thousands of people displaced by fatal floods that have ravaged the Horn of Africa nation since the beginning of this month amid fears of more floods. As emergency workers struggled against poor weather, federal authorities said the funding would help alleviate suffering in the flooded regions.

Two global rights groups on Wednesday expressed grave concern over the treatment of several Ethiopian prisoners detained for months since violent protests over disputed elections last year. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists and London-based Amnesty International decried the conditions in which three detainees are being held.

Heavy rain, swirling waters, mud, silt and marsh combined on Wednesday to hamper frantic efforts to reach thousands of villagers marooned by deadly flash floods in southern Ethiopia, officials said. The elements, combined with the reluctance of pastoralist herders to leave their surviving cattle for higher ground, frustrated the delivery of the first overland relief supplies.

The first overland relief supplies for tens of thousands of victims of fatal flash floods reached devastated southern Ethiopia on Tuesday, amid fears of a sharp rise in the death toll. In addition to the 626 people known so far to have been killed across the country, thousands of heads of valuable livestock have drowned.

Diarrhoea has killed 150 people and infected nearly 12 000 in flood-ravaged Ethiopia, the United Nations said on Monday, as aid agencies and governments struggled to deliver food and supplies to tens of thousands left homeless. Flash floods that began swamping villages and towns earlier this month have already killed about 900 people.

Ethiopia on Monday stepped up evacuation warnings in low-lying areas as heavy rains threatened more of the flash floods that have already killed at least 600 people and affected tens of thousands around the country. Authorities said unusually heavy seasonal downpours in the highlands have raised water levels to a critical level at three dams.

Emergency workers in south-west Ethiopia scrambled on Thursday to rescue thousands marooned by the latest in a series of deadly flash floods across the nation feared to have killed nearly 900 people. With 876 people in southern, eastern and northern Ethiopia already reported dead or missing, officials warned that the toll was likely to climb higher.