Headlines

Iraqi government forces are keeping up the pressure on ISIL – beginning a major operation on Monday to storm the militant stronghold of Falluja, reports say.

According to a report by AFP quoting army commanders, Iraqi forces have entered the city, which was one of the first in Iraq to fall to the militant group in 2014.

Reuters quotes a military officer as saying the Iraqi army has begun an operation on Monday to storm Falluja, and that a military unit was trying to advance in the city, which lies some 50 kilometres from Baghdad.

Explosions and gunfire could be heard in Falluja’s southern Naimiya district.

Iraqi government began a major push to recapture the city on May 23.

Details

Rita Akana

30.May.2016

Hits: 1696

Write comment (0 Comments)

At least 59 people were injured in Guinea on Saturday when frustrated youth that were being kept out of the opening of a new mosque in the town of Timbo clashed with the police, Reuters reports health officials to say.

Security officials stopped ordinary people from entering the new mosque to allow local dignitaries to pass but the youth became angry, began throwing stones and attempted to force themselves in. The police repelled them by hurling teargas canisters at them.

“There was a huge clash between the police and the young people and clouds of tear gas. I saw old women pushed over by the surging crowd. It was serious,” said Latif Haidera, a witness.

Mamadou Kouyate, the director of the regional hospital at Mamou, said 59 people were treated at his hospital alone following the incident on Friday in Timbo, which is about 260 km (163 miles) northeast of the capital Conakry.

Details

Rita Akana

29.May.2016

Hits: 1665

Write comment (0 Comments)

At least 700 migrants may have died at sea this past week in the busiest week of migrant crossings from Libya towards Italy this year, Medecins San Frontieres and the UN Refugee agency said on Sunday.

About 14,000 have been rescued since Monday amid calm seas, and there have been at least three confirmed instances of boats sinking. But the number of dead can only be estimated based on survivor testimony, which is still being collected.

"We will never know exact numbers," Medecins San Frontieres said in a Tweet after estimating that 900 had died during the week. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said more than 700 had drowned.

Migrants interviewed on Saturday in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo told of a large fishing boat that overturned and sank on Thursday with many women and children on board.

Initial estimates were that 400 people died, but the UN Refugee agency said on Sunday there may have been about 670 passengers on board.

According to testimony collected by EU border agency Frontex, when the motorless fishing boat capsized, 25 swam to the boat that had been towing it, while 79-89 others were saved by rescuers and 15 bodies were recovered. This meant more than 550 died, the UNHCR said.

The migrants -- fleeing wars, oppression and poverty -- often do not know how to swim and do not have life jackets. They pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to make the crossing from Libya to Italy, by far the most dangerous border passage for migrants in the world.

This week's arrivals included Eritreans, Sudanese, Nigerians and many other West Africans, humanitarian groups say. Despite the surge this week, as of Friday 40,660 arrivals had been counted, 2 percent fewer than the same period of last year, the Interior Ministry said.

Most of the boats this week appear to have left from Sabratha, Libya, where many said smugglers had beaten them and women said they had been raped, said MSF, which has three rescue boats in the area.

The migrants are piled onto flimsy rubber boats or old fishing vessels which can toss their occupants into the sea in a matter of seconds.

About 100 are thought to have either been trapped in the hull or to have drowned after tumbling into the sea on Wednesday.

On Friday, the Italian Navy ship Vega collected 45 bodies and rescued 135 from a "half submerged" rubber boat. It is not yet known exactly how many were on board, but the rubber boats normally carry about 300.

"Some were more shaken than others because they had lost their loved ones," Raffaele Martino, commander of the Vega, told Reuters on Sunday in the southern port of Reggio Calabria, where the Vega docked with the survivors and corpses, including those of three infants.

"It's time that Europe had the courage to offer safe alternatives that allow these people to come without putting their own lives or those of their children in danger," Tommaso Fabri of MSF Italy said.

Reuters

Details

Rita Akana

29.May.2016

Hits: 1879

Write comment (0 Comments)

“These include the prohibition of access to breeding sites to any person outside the station, the ban on entry and output of livestock products and other inputs, the slaughter of all birds, incineration and landfilling of all carcass in accordance with the regulations,’‘ the minister is quoted as saying.

The 15,000 infected birds – representing 50% of birds in the affected facility – died in three days. The government says all the dead birds have been incinerated and the rest slaughtered.

The authorities also said the treatment of any infected people will be “free”.

Details

Rita Akana

29.May.2016

Hits: 2716

Write comment (0 Comments)

The Head of State His Excellency Paul BIYA left Yaounde this Friday 27 May 2016 for a brief private visit to Europe.

He was accompanied by a few of his close collaborators.No details about the nature or length of the trip have been disclosed.

Details

Rita Akana

27.May.2016

Hits: 2360

Write comment (0 Comments)

A Nigerian student was assaulted with an iron rod in Southern India Thursday, barely a week after a Congolese student was beaten to death in New Delhi.

Kazeem, a 23-year-old student of Nizam College whose last name has not been released, was beaten by a neighbor in Hyderbad after the two reportedly had a heated argument regarding a parking space. Though local police have ruled out racism as a motive, citing the parking disagreement instead, crime against Africans has been a persistent issue in India.

The incident follows the killing of Masunda Kitada Oliver, a 23-year-old Congolese graduate student who had lived in New Delhi for six years. He was hailing a rickshaw last Friday when three men who claimed they had hired the vehicle beat him and hit him on the head with a stone. Oliver died later that night, according to police.

"The incident came to light at around 11:55 p.m. and the eyewitnesses told the police that the victim was chased for 20 meters and then beaten up by the assailants," a senior police officer told local media. "He had injuries on his head and face."

Two of the suspects have been detained, while a third remains on the run.

In February, a Tanzanian woman was attacked, stripped, and set ablaze by a mob in Bangalore.

Discrimination

These cases have brought national attention to an issue of discrimination and violence facing the small population of Africans on the subcontinent. Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj has commented on the two cases this month, demanding an investigation into the beating of Kazeem early Thursday.

Swaraj, however, like many Indians, would like to treat such cases of seemingly prejudice-motivated violence as isolated incidents instead of a larger problem.

"I would like to assure African students in India that this [is] an unfortunate and painful incident involving local goons," Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj tweeted Wednesday.

The Group of African Heads of Mission released a statement insisting that this is a continuous problem, calling on India to ensure better protection of Africans on its soil.

"The Group of African heads of Mission have met and deliberated extensively on this latest incidence in the series of attacks to which members of the African community have been subjected to in the last several years," dean of the group and Eritrean ambassador Alem Tsehage Woldemariam said in a statement.

"They strongly condemn the brutal killing of this African and calls on the Indian government to take concrete steps to guarantee the safety and security of Africans in India."

Boycott

The group of diplomats stated it would boycott an annual Africa Day event, but has since reversed its decision. Still, the initial boycott sent a clear message to India that Africans are concerned with what they perceive as systematic racial violence.

“I think [the] boycott serves a point in the sense that it registers strongly African concern,” Dr. Ajay Dubey, head of the African Student Association at JNU in Delhi, told VOA.

"There is a growing engagement of India with Africa, and Africans are also moving to India and in that context they want some of the prejudices that exist in Indian society to be addressed by taking concrete steps...the government must address the issue and take some visible, concrete steps," he said.

Indians and Africans alike are not optimistic about the prospect of these concrete steps. Local reporters and citizens on social media have commented that the government's actions have been limited to tweets which will serve no purpose in raising awareness and protections for Africans.

While Dubey acknowledges the rampant racism throughout his country, he sees it directed at dark-skinned people, as opposed to people specifically of African descent.

“This racism is not exclusive to Africans – this racism is part of the color-based discrimination that exists in India since colonial times," he said, citing prejudice and violent crimes against dark-skinned and tribal citizens from the South. He says that Africans do, however, face more of a threat than dark-skinned Indians, but because of their skin-tone, as opposed to their place of origin.

But another chairman of an African Students Association, Emmanuel Omurunga of Telangana, told local media that police were not willing to help, indicating that the situation was not only ongoing, but worsening.

"The situation in India is no longer safe for us."

VOA

Details

Rita Akana

27.May.2016

Hits: 2411

Write comment (0 Comments)