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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.
Sudanese government forces and militia groups razed a town in central Darfur where African Union soldiers were attacked, rebel leaders said on Friday, adding the troops were also threatening to raid a nearby town. Sudan’s army and Darfur rebel movements blame each other for last week’s assault on the AU base in Haskanita in which 10 African Union soldiers were killed.
The Zimbabwe government said it is pressing ahead with legislation to seize a controlling share of foreign-owned mining interests in the country, the official media reported on Friday. Police also said a total of 23 585 corporate executives, store managers, traders, street vendors and bus drivers were arrested for overcharging since a prize freeze was ordered.
Iran’s president accused Israel on Friday of using the Holocaust as a pretext for ”genocide” against Palestinians. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who outraged the West in 2005 by calling Israel a ”tumour” to be wiped off the map, said the truth should be told about World War II and the Holocaust.
A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year amount to a climate change ”mega disaster”, the United Nation’s emergency relief coordinator, John Holmes, has warned. Holmes said dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on her first visit to sub-Saharan Africa, called on Thursday for more democratic opening in Ethiopia, a key ally of the West now under scrutiny over rights issues. On the first leg of a five-day tour, the German leader urged Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to provide greater space in Ethiopia for both political opposition and the media.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the world could not stop the Islamic state’s nuclear programme, which the West fears is a cover to build nuclear bomb, the official IRNA news agency said on Thursday. Ahmadinejad was speaking the day after French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called on the European Union to take the lead in widening financial sanctions on Iran.
Ethiopia on Thursday pledged 5 000 troops to a United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region. The 26 000-strong joint mission is to replace a hard-pressed AU force that lacks experience, equipment and cash and has been unable to stop the conflict.
A Soviet-era Antonov 26 cargo plane crashed in Kinshasa on Thursday, smashing through a dozen houses and killing 25 people on board as well as a number of people on the ground, officials and the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo said. Witnesses said it exploded in a fireball on impact.
International elder statesmen, including two Nobel Peace Prize winners, said on Thursday that Darfur was rife with violence and deeply divided after returning from the Sudanese region. They warned rape was widespread and being ignored by the Sudanese authorities and also urged Khartoum to hand over war-crimes suspects for trial at the International Criminal Court.
Despite gradually easing its iron grip on Burma’s main city on Thursday, the junta continued to round up scores of people and grill hundreds more arrested during last week’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy marches. One freed monk said some had been beaten when they refused to answer questions about their identity.
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation was launched in October 2006 to promote good governance in Africa with the support of world leaders, including Nelson Mandela, Alpha Konaré, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. On October 22 2007, the foundation will announce the winner of the world’s biggest prize, the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, to be awarded to a former African executive head of state.
Burma’s military regime kept up the pressure on its people on Wednesday after last week’s bloody crackdown on protesters as the European Union agreed in principle to punish the junta with sanctions. Troops who last week killed at least 13 and arrested over 1 000 people continued overnight arrests and mounted patrols to strike terror into the population.