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/ 11 October 2007
Darfur peace talks, aimed at stopping chaotic violence plaguing Sudan’s west, will be a ”moment of truth”, United Nations envoy Jan Eliasson said on Thursday. He urged all of the more than a dozen fractured Darfur rebel factions to attend the talks due to start in Libya on October 27 and said an urgent ceasefire would be the priority.
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/ 11 October 2007
A suicide bomber drove a pickup truck filled with explosives into a Somali army base, killing himself and two others near a hotel where the prime minister set up temporary headquarters, officials said on Thursday. The explosion late on Wednesday, in the southern town of Baidoa, targeted a base manned mostly by Ethiopian troops.
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/ 11 October 2007
Iraq’s humanitarian crisis is worsening and the plight of millions of displaced Iraqis is critical, says a grim United Nations report on human rights in the war-torn country that was released on Thursday. ”Daily life for the average Iraqi civilian remains extremely precarious,” said the human rights report of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq.
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/ 11 October 2007
Gunfire rang out Thursday near Mushaki in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Nord-Kivu province, a day after a renegade former general appealed for a truce with the army, the United Nations said. ”Firing is going on this morning 2km or 3km from Mushaki,” Prem Tiwari, local military spokesperson for the UN’s peacekeeping mission in DRC, said.
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/ 11 October 2007
Renegade former general Laurent Nkunda late on Wednesday called for a truce in his battle with the army of the Democratic Republic of Congo after at least 85 rebels died in four days of heavy clashes. Nkunda also offered to send 500 of his men to a transit camp pending their integration into the regular forces.
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/ 11 October 2007
Conflicts in Africa since the end of the Cold War have cost the continent -billion, equivalent to all the foreign aid it has received over the same period, according to a report released by Oxfam on Thursday. The study, Africa’s Missing Billions, says that almost half of the countries on the continent have been involved in some form of conflict since 1990.
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/ 10 October 2007
Fighting has erupted between the only Darfur rebel group to have signed a 2006 peace accord and Sudanese troops, the United Nations said on Wednesday after the rebels accused Khartoum of attacking a town the rebels control. The United Nations said that exchanges of fire took place on between the Sudan Liberation Army faction of Minni Minawi and the Sudanese army.
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/ 10 October 2007
Conventional food aid is not enough to solve Africa’s malnutrition crisis, especially in nations wracked by conflict, an international health agency said on Wednesday. In a continent where thousands of young children suffer from acute malnutrition, the use of nutrient-dense ready-to-use foods needs urgent expansion, Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF) said.
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/ 10 October 2007
The Democratic Alliance (DA) got it wrong when criticising Minister of Social Development Zola Skweyiya for travelling abroad, his department said on Wednesday. The DA overcalculated the number of overseas visits he made, the number of days he was out of the country and the cost, it said in a statement in his defence.
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/ 10 October 2007
Sudan’s army has denied attacking the only Darfur rebel faction to sign a peace deal with Khartoum, saying tribal clashes were to blame for the fighting that killed 45 people in Muhajiriya town. The Sudan Liberation Army, led by Minni Arcua Minnawi, was the only one of three negotiating rebel factions to sign the May 2006 deal and become part of government.
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/ 10 October 2007
The party of Burma’s detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Wednesday it had not yet heard from the junta despite the appointment of a general to hold talks with her. Burma’s junta cracked down on protests led by monks in Rangoon last month, unleashing baton charges, tear gas and live rounds.
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/ 10 October 2007
More than 100 fighters, including 85 rebels, have been killed in clashes in the Nord-Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a top army officer said on Wednesday. Colonel Delphin Kahimbi, the army’s second in command in the eastern province, said 16 troops and 85 rebels had been killed around Karuba.
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/ 10 October 2007
Boboh village used to do a roaring trade in the Pa Gbana cocktail, a mix of fermented local grasses, coconut and lime favoured by tourists to wash down freshly-cooked lobster. Nowadays there is little demand for the drink, named after the village’s oldest resident: the only foreigners on Boboh’s pristine beaches, south of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, are development workers taking time out.
United Nations officials warned on Tuesday that fighting between rebels and army troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had displaced up to 500 000 people and left many in an ”appalling” situation. The warning came as heavy fighting between forces loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda and the army continued in the Nord-Kivu region on Tuesday.
Somalia’s prime minister has reached a truce with Mogadishu’s dominant clan, some of whose fighters had supported Islamist-led insurgents in battles with government troops and Ethiopian forces earlier this year. Hawiye clan elders met Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi amid tight security on Monday in the capital, which has been rocked by insecurity since January.
Sudan’s army bombed Muhajiriya, the main Darfur town held by the only rebel faction to sign a 2006 peace deal with Khartoum, injuring at least two dozen people, the African Union force commander said on Tuesday. Martin Luther Agwai said it was not yet clear why the fighting began on Monday.
A Sudanese army air and ground assault killed at least 45 people in the Darfur town of Muhajiriya, where bodies littered the streets amid burned out buildings, rebels who control the area said on Tuesday. ”Until now the number of dead civilians are at least 40, with 80 missing and a large number of injured,” the Sudan Liberation Army said.
After ”white gold” — cotton — failed to live up to expectations in recent years, the impoverished West African nation of Burkina Faso has turned its energy to digging for real gold. To make up for low prices on the cotton market that have hit its top export earner, Burkina Faso has relaunched its large-scale mining sector.
Worsening violence in Darfur risks spreading the conflict further in Sudan and shows the need for advanced equipment a planned United Nations peacekeeping force does not yet have. UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno said the situation had deteriorated with an attack late last month by armed men on an African Union base.
Sudanese government troops and allied militia on Monday attacked a town belonging to the only Darfur rebel faction to sign a 2006 peace deal, rebels said. ”Government planes have attacked Muhajiriya, which belongs to us, and government forces and Janjaweed militia are fighting our forces” said Khalid Abakar, a senior representative from the Sudan Liberation Army.
Outgoing Ethiopian President Girma Wolde-Giorgise accused Eritrea on Monday of disregarding attempts to peacefully resolve a border impasse and putting the Horn of Africa neighbours on the path to war. ”Our government has persistently expressed its unwavering desire to engage in a relationship with Eritrea based on the principles of peace and non-interference,” he said.
Renegade ex-general Laurent Nkunda said Monday that his troops had launched an ”active offensive” against the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) army in the east of the country. An officer in the DRC armed force confirmed that fighting had broken out again in the Masisi highlands.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) renegade general Laurent Nkunda on Monday abandoned a month-old ceasefire and blamed government army attacks for fresh fighting in an eastern border province. His announcement heralded more conflict and humanitarian suffering in DRC’s North Kivu province, which has long been a tinderbox of ethnic tensions.
At least 58 people have died in Vietnam since a typhoon slammed into the country, bringing the worst floods in decades to northern and central areas, rescue officials said on Monday. Emergency workers were taking water, food and medical supplies by boat and helicopter to stranded villagers cut off after rivers burst through dykes.
A Darfur town has been burned to the ground and its residents forced to flee, days after 10 African Union (AU) troops were killed there in an attack, a joint United Nations/African Union mission said on Sunday. The report confirmed rebel statements on Friday that the remote settlement of Haskanita had been all but destroyed.
The United Nations’s nuclear watchdog head begins a long scheduled trip to India on Monday that has turned into a political flashpoint as a nuclear energy deal with the United States threatens to spark snap elections. The trip comes as India faces an informal end-October deadline to begin securing clearances to clinch the nuclear energy deal.
The Burma junta reduced security in Yangon sharply on Sunday, apparently confident it would face no further mass protests against military rule, but the streets remained unusually quiet and arrests continued. The few people on the streets said they were still fearful and the internet remained cut off.
A key Darfur rebel leader warned on Saturday his movement will not attend peace talks this month in Libya unless the United Nations and the African Union can convince a rival group to unite its splinter factions.Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, had said he would attend talks set to begin October 27 in Tripoli, Libya.
Protests against Burma’s bloody crackdown on dissenters took place in cities around the world on Saturday, with thousands demonstrating in London and smaller gatherings held in Sydney, Stockholm, Bangkok, Paris and elsewhere. The coordinated displays of public condemnation followed the violent crackdown by Burma’s junta on thousands of activists in late September.
Key United Nations powers stepped up calls for Burma to release political prisoners after an envoy to the repressive state warned of ”serious international repercussions” from the bloody turmoil there. The United States signalled on Friday it may push for UN sanctions if the ruling junta kept up a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party dismissed the Burma junta’s offer of talks as surreal on Friday as a United Nations envoy warned of ”serious international consequences” from the junta’s brutal suppression of pro-democracy protesters.
Grenades hurled by insurgents killed at least five Somalis around the capital’s main market, a witness said on Friday. Mohamed Abdulle Matan, one of the main traders at the Bakara market, said two soldiers were also wounded in the attack, a day after the government announced a major security crackdown on Islamic insurgents.