Tag: East Africa

Two explosions rock Somalia’s capital, leaving “scores” dead

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MOGADISHU, Somalia — Two car bombs exploded Saturday at a busy junction in Somalia’s capital near key government offices, leaving “scores of civilian casualties” including children, national police said. The attack came five years after a massive blast at the same location.

The attack in Mogadishu occurred on a day when the president, prime minister and other senior officials were meeting to discuss combating violent extremism, especially by the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab group that often targets the capital.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Al-Shabab rarely claims attacks with large numbers of civilians killed, as in the 2017 blast.

An Associated Press journalist at the scene saw “many” bodies and said they appeared to be civilians traveling on public transport. He said the second blast occurred in front of a busy restaurant during lunchtime. The blasts left crushed tuk-tuks and other vehicles in an area of many restaurants and hotels.

The Aamin ambulance service told the AP they had collected at least 35 wounded. One of the ambulances responding to the attack was destroyed by the second blast, director Abdulkadir Adan added in a tweet.

“I was 100 meters away when the second blast occurred,” witness Abdirazak Hassan said. “I couldn’t count the bodies on the ground due to the (number of) fatalities.” He said the first blast hit the perimeter wall of the education ministry, where street vendors and money changers were located.

The Somali Journalists Syndicate, citing colleagues and police, said one journalist was killed and two others wounded by the second blast while rushing to the scene of the first.

The attack occurred at Zobe junction, which was the scene of a huge al-Shabab truck bombing in 2017 that killed more than 500 people. Police said the new attack occurred at the exact spot as the 2017 one.

Somalia’s government has been engaged in a high-profile new offensive against the extremist group that the United States has described as one of al-Qaida’s deadliest organizations. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has described it as “total war” against the extremists, who control large parts of central and southern Somalia and have been the target of scores of U.S. airstrikes in recent years.

The extremists have responded by killing prominent clan leaders in an apparent effort to dissuade support for that government offensive.

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October 29, 2022
WHO: Ugandan Ebola outbreak ‘rapidly evolving’ after 1 month

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KAMPALA, Uganda — Uganda’s Ebola outbreak is “rapidly evolving” a month after the disease was reported in the East African country, a top World Health Organization official said Thursday, describing a difficult situation for health workers.

“The Ministry of Health of Uganda has shown remarkable resilience and effectiveness and (is) constantly fine-tuning a response to what is a challenging situation,” Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the U.N. health agency’s regional director for Africa, told reporters. “A better understanding of the chains of transmission is helping those on the ground respond more effectively.”

Uganda declared an outbreak of Ebola on Sept. 20, several days after the contagious disease began spreading in a rural farming community. Ebola has since infected 64 people and killed 24, although official figures do not include people who likely died of Ebola before the outbreak was confirmed.

At least three of the confirmed patients traveled from the virus hot spot in central Uganda to the capital, Kampala, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) away, according to Moeti. Fears that Ebola could spread far from the outbreak’s epicenter caused authorities to impose a lockdown, including nighttime curfews, on two of the five districts reporting Ebola cases.

Ebola “numbers that we are seeing do pose a risk for spread within the country and its neighbors,” Dr. Ahmed Ogwell, the acting head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a separate briefing Thursday.

While the risk of cross-border contamination is there, “it’s a manageable risk,” Ogwell said, adding that the outbreak does not yet necessitate going into what he called “full emergency mode.”

There is no proven vaccine for the Sudan strain of Ebola that’s circulating in Uganda. A WHO official in Uganda told the AP Wednesday that plans are underway to deploy two experimental vaccines in a study targeting health workers and contacts of Ebola patients.

Ugandan officials have documented more than 1,800 Ebola contacts, 747 of whom have completed 21 days of monitoring for possible signs of the disease that manifests as a viral hemorrhagic fever, Ogwell said.

Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and, at times, internal and external bleeding.

Scientists don’t know the natural reservoir of Ebola, but they suspect the first person infected in an outbreak acquired the virus through contact with an infected animal or eating its raw meat. Ugandan officials are still investigating the source of the current outbreak.

Uganda has had multiple Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2000 that killed more than 200 people. The 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people, the disease’s largest death toll.

Ebola was discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks in South Sudan and Congo, where it occurred in a village near the Ebola River, after which the disease is named.

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Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal.

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October 23, 2022
Sudan official: Deaths from southern tribal clashes at 220

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CAIRO — Two days of tribal fighting in Sudan’s south killed at least 220 people, a senior health official said Sunday, marking one the deadliest bouts of tribal violence in recent years. The unrest added to the woes of an African nation mired in civil conflict and political chaos.

Fighting in Blue Nile province, which borders Ethiopia and South Sudan, reignited earlier this month over a land dispute. It pits the Hausa tribe, with origins across West Africa, against the Berta people.

The tensions escalated Wednesday and Thursday in the town of Wad el-Mahi on the border with Ethiopia, according to Fath Arrahman Bakheit, the director general of the Health Ministry in Blue Nile.

He told The Associated Press that officials counted at least 220 dead as of Saturday night, adding the tally could be much higher since medical teams were not able to reach the epicenter of the fighting.

Bakheit said the first humanitarian and medical convoy managed to reach Was el-Mahi late Saturday to try to assess the situation, including counting “this huge number of bodies,” and the dozens of injured.

“In such clashes, everyone loses,” he said. “We hope it ends soon and never happens again. But we need strong political, security and civil interventions to achieve that goal.”

Footage from the scene, which corresponded to the AP’s reporting, showed burned houses and charred bodies. Others showed women and children fleeing on foot.

Many houses were burned down in the fighting, which displaced some 7,000 people to the city of Rusyaris. Others fled to neighboring provinces, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Overall, about 211,000 people have been displaced by tribal violence and other attacks across the country this year, it said.

Authorities ordered a nighttime curfew in Wad el-Mahi and deployed troops to the area. They also established a fact-finding committee to investigate the clashes, according to the state-run SUNA news agency.

The fighting between the two groups first erupted in mid-July, killing at least 149 people as of earlier October. It triggered violent protests and stoked tensions between the two tribes in Blue Nile and other provinces.

The latest fighting comes at a critical time for Sudan, just a few days before the first anniversary of a military coup that further plunged the country into turmoil. The coup derailed the country’s short-lived transition to democracy after nearly three decades of the repressive rule of Omar al-Bashir, who was removed in April 2019 by a popular uprising.

In recent weeks the military and the pro-democracy movement have engaged in talks to find a way out of the ongoing situation. The generals agreed to allow civilians to appoint a prime minister to lead the country through elections within 24 months, the pro-democracy movement said last week.

However, the violence in Blue Nile is likely to slow down such efforts. Protest groups, who reject the deal with the ruling generals, have been preparing for mass anti-military demonstrations called for Tuesday, the anniversary of the coup.

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October 23, 2022
Calls grow for Ethiopia peace effort as fighting intensifies

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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Diplomats are calling on Ethiopia ’s federal authorities and their rivals in the northern region of Tigray to agree to a cease-fire as heavy fighting raises growing humanitarian fears.

African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat expressed “grave concern” in a statement Sunday over the fighting and called for an “immediate, unconditional cease-fire and the resumption of humanitarian services.”

AU-led peace talks were due to take place in South Africa earlier this month, but were postponed because of logistical and technical issues.

The warring parties had said they were ready to participate in the process, even though fighting persists in Tigray.

“The Chairperson urges the Parties to recommit to dialogue as per their agreement to direct talks to be convened in South Africa by a high-level team led by the AU High Representative for the Horn of Africa, and supported by the international community,” Mahamat said in a statement.

The AU statement followed one issued late Saturday by a U.N. spokesman who said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “gravely concerned about the escalation of the fighting” and called for an immediate cessation of hostilities.

Fighting resumed between the Tigray forces and the federal troops in August, bringing an end to a cease-fire in place since March that had allowed much-needed aid to enter the region. Fighting has drawn in forces from Eritrea, on the side of Ethiopia’s federal military.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power called on Eritrean forces to withdraw from Tigray and urged the parties to observe a cease-fire, warning in a tweet that up to a 1 million people are “teetering on the edge of famine” in the region.

“The conflict has displaced millions of people, and camps for displaced Ethiopians have also fallen under attack,” said Power, who warned of further bloodshed if Eritrean and Ethiopian federal forces take charge of the camps.

The cease-fire calls came as heavy clashes were reported near the northwestern Tigray town of Shire, where an attack on Friday killed a International Rescue Committee worker who was distributing aid supplies.

European Union foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell said he was “horrified by the reports of continuous violence, including the targeting of civilians in Shire.”

Tigray forces said in a statement that they welcomed the AU’s cease-fire call.

“We are ready to abide by an immediate cessation of hostilities,” the statement said. Ethiopia’s federal government has yet to respond.

Aid distributions are being hampered by a lack of fuel and an ongoing communications blackout in Tigray. The Associated Press reported Saturday that a U.N. team found there were “10 starvation-related deaths” at seven camps for internally displaced people in northwestern Tigray, according to an internal document prepared by a humanitarian agency.

Millions of people in northern Ethiopia, including the neighboring regions of Amhara and Afar, have been uprooted from their homes and tens of thousands of people are believed to have been killed since the conflict broke out in November 2020.

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October 16, 2022
Mozambique jihadi violence spreads despite military effort

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NANJUA, Mozambique — Fleeing beheadings, shootings, rapes and kidnappings, nearly 1 million people are displaced by the Islamic extremist insurgency in northern Mozambique.

The 5-year wave of jihadi violence in Cabo Delgado province has killed more than 4,000 people and scuppered international investments worth billions of dollars.

In a sprawl of dilapidated tents and thatched huts around Nanjua, a small town in the southern part of Cabo Delgado province, several hundred families are seeking safety from the violence. They say their conditions are bleak and food assistance is meager but they’re afraid to return home because of continuing violence by the rebels who are now going by the name Islamic State Mozambique Province.

More than 1.000 miles south, however, government officials in the capital Maputo are saying the insurgency is under control and are encouraging the displaced to return to their homes and energy companies to resume their projects.

“The terrorists are on the run permanently,” Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi assured investors at the Mozambique Energy and Gas Summit in Maputo in September. He urged the gathering of international energy executives to resume work on their stalled liquefied natural gas projects.

Mozambique’s army and police forces, backed up by troops from Rwanda and support from a regional force from the Southern African Development Community, have succeeded in containing the extremist rebellion, officials say.

“These places have now normalized and civilians are coming back,” Rwandan Brig. Gen. Ronald Rwivanga, told the Rwandan newspaper The New Times this month, saying normal life is returning to the Palma district.

Energy companies say they want to see displaced people return to the area. The $60 billion liquefied natural gas projects led by the France-based TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil were suspended last year after insurgents briefly captured the adjacent town of Palma in March.

Speaking at the summit in Maputo, Stéphane Le Galles, the head of TotalEnergies’ Mozambique gas project, said “the direction is very good” but the company still wants to see “a sustainable economic situation, not just in Palma but … all over Cabo Delgado.”

Despite the heavy presence of Mozambican and Rwandan soldiers, the extremists’ attacks continue. Earlier this month the rebels spread their violence for the first time to neighboring Nampula province, where a Catholic mission was among the targets and an elderly Italian nun was among those killed.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees said it “considers security conditions to be too volatile in Cabo Delgado to facilitate or promote returns to the province,” in a statement released earlier this month.

“People who have lost everything are returning to areas where services and humanitarian assistance are largely unavailable,” said the UNHCR.

Those who return are met with a mixed situation. Economic life is beginning to return but basic infrastructure and public services are still lacking. Few schools are open and health services are sparse.

In the provincial capital, Pemba, where more than 100,000 displaced people have sought refuge, an elderly woman sat outside a hut where her family of 15 took up residence two years ago after fleeing an insurgent attack. They subsist on a meager diet of corn flour and plain rice. Unable to find work, they have no money for clothes or other essentials, she said.

“Definitely, we want to go back. This is not a home,” said the grandmother, who spoke on condition of anonymity for her safety.

With their villages further north now destroyed, she says resuming normal life will be even more difficult.

Weighing up the risks and costs of returning, many have decided to stay put, despite the deprivations they face in the displacement camps.

“Over there, there is war and hunger,” said another displaced person in the Nanjua camp. “We would not be going to a better place.”

A mother cradling a small child while sitting on a grass mat said the threat of extremist violence remains a concern. She said many remain haunted by their experiences at the hands of the insurgents: “It’s difficult to sleep in a place where you have seen a snake.”

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October 16, 2022