Africa

Sudan’s Bloody Tribal Clashes Threaten Fragile Transition

An upsurge in bloody tribal clashes in Sudan has killed at least 59 people and wounded over 100 this month, heaping more pressure on the country’s fragile transitional government. More than a year since the fall of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir, who ruled over ethnically diverse regions with an iron fist, the joint civilian-military administration has struggled to steady a politically and economically unstable Sudan. In the latest inter-ethnic violence, 30 people were killed in clashes on May 7 between the Arab Rizeigat tribe and the Falata, who trace their roots to western Africa, sparked by a dispute over livestock. Three days later, three people died, 79 were wounded and several homes were burnt down in violence between members of the Bani Amer and Nuba tribes in the eastern city of Kassala, near Sudan’s border with Eritrea. This was followed by yet more lethal confrontations that left 26 people dead and 19 injured on May 13 in Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan province. Tribal grievances spilling over into bloodshed have been a mainstay of Sudan’s numerous ethnic conflicts since independence from British and Egyptian rule in 1956. Sudan’s most notorious violence shook the Dafur region in 2003 when Bashir’s …

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Coronavirus Fails to Halt Conflict in DR Congo’s Powder-Keg East

Coronavirus has swiftly gained status as the world’s No. 1 threat but in eastern DR Congo, one of Africa’s most volatile regions, militia killings and ethnic violence are an older and — for now — far greater source of dread. Some 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) distant from the capital Kinshasa, this beautiful region bordering Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi has been a notorious flashpoint since the Congo Wars of the 1990s. “The COVID-19 crisis must not make us forget the atrocities which are taking place in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo,” 2018 Nobel peace laureate Denis Mukwege said on Tuesday. In the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, “civilians are being massacred,” he said. “In South Kivu, Rwandan and Burundian armies are battling armed groups in the high plateaus of Minembwe, destroying everything in their wake,” Mukwege said. “And in Tanganyika, the Zambians who had until now had good neighborly relations with DR Congo… recently invaded our territory.” Mukwege co-won the coveted prize for his treatment in helping women raped by armed rebels in South Kivu. The Kivu Security Tracker, an NGO which documents bloodshed in the two Kivu provinces, said March was one of the least violent months it …

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Worried Togo Finds Itself on Front Line of Sahel’s Jihadist War

In a makeshift bunker of sacks of rice beneath a tree, heavily-armed Togolese soldiers keep watch over villagers coming and going on foot or bike across the border with Burkina Faso. Just a dried-out river bed separates the two West African countries. In surrounding fields, peasant farmers are bent silhouettes, watering the sorghum and maize seeds sown before the arrival of the first rains. Soon, clouds will chase away the fine dust of the harmattan, the desert wind that each year sweeps off the Sahara southwards to the coast and chokes the air. Nothing dramatic, or so it would seem, ever happens at Yemboate, in Togo’s far north. Yet less than 30 kilometers (19 miles) away, over the border in eastern Burkina Faso, jihadists and militia groups have imposed their own brutal law. Those policemen, doctors, and teachers who have not fled are being hunted down and butchered. “When I was small, we spent our time swimming in the river,” says farmer Abdoulaye Mossi, leaning on his bike with a hoe, speaking to AFP before the coronavirus pandemic. The arid channel separates his peaceful village of cob huts from a Burkinabe village on the other side. “Fear rules today,” the farmer says. But fear does …

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Three Aid Workers Killed as South Sudan Clashes Leave ‘Many’ Dead

South Sudan’s U.N. peacekeeping mission said Wednesday it was investigating reports that “many people” had died in a surge of intercommunal violence that killed three aid workers and left several missing. Clashes between members of the Murle and Lou Nuer communities broke out over the weekend in the northeastern town of Pieri, where peacekeepers have been interviewing survivors, the U.N. mission said in a statement. “The team is investigating reports that many people were killed, injured and lost their homes,” the statement said, adding that “many” huts were burnt to the ground. “However, it is difficult to verify the number of casualties given conflicting reports and claims,” it said. Moses Majok Gatluak, a member of the Lou Nuer group and former local official in the area, told AFP that 211 people were killed and 300 injured, but that toll could not be independently verified. He said the Murle had attacked Lou Nuer villages. The attack comes after a strike by the Lou Nuer against the Murle earlier this year — part of a decades-old pendulum swing of violence and revenge by the two cattle-rustling communities. The fighting often leaves hundreds dead, with one attack in 2009 killing up to 750, according to the …

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Two Soldiers, Five Volunteers Killed in Burkina Attack

Two Burkina Faso soldiers and five civilian defense volunteers have been killed during an ambush on a military patrol in the restive north of the country, security sources said Tuesday. The attack occurred on Monday as soldiers from the military detachment in Banh in Loroum province were carrying out a patrol in the area, the sources said. “Two soldiers were killed along with five civilians,” a security source told AFP. Another security source said the civilian casualties were “defense volunteers who were with the military unit during the patrol,” adding two soldiers also died. The source said four others in the patrol were wounded, without giving further details. Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist alliance GSIM claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming to have killed “nine soldiers” in an ambush and taken weapons and vehicles, in a text sent to AFP late Tuesday. The Mali-based GSIM (Group to Support Islam and Muslims) comprises several different jihadist groups in the Sahel. On May 11, jihadists killed eight Burkinabe soldiers during an attack close to the Niger border in Yagha province, security sources said at the time. Burkina Faso is part of a regional effort to battle an Islamist insurgency, along with neighboring Mali and Niger, Mauritania and Chad. However, …

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Jihadists Attack Nigeria Town Where Girls Abducted

Jihadists have carried out a rare attack on the northeast Nigerian town of Dapchi, where more than 100 schoolgirls were abducted two years ago, military sources and residents said Tuesday. One soldier was killed and three wounded as fighters believed to be from an Islamic State group affiliate looted shops and torched the home of a local chief in the assault Monday, the sources told AFP. The attack comes days before the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when jihadists who have waged a 10-year insurgency usually ramp up their deadly assaults in the region. Fighters suspected to be from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) faction stormed the town, leading to a fight with troops in which sources said the soldier and five jihadists were killed. Resident Bashir Manzo said the insurgents spent over four hours in town before soldiers backed by a military jet confronted them. Dapchi was the scene of the abduction of more than 100 schoolgirls by ISWAP in February 2018. The girls were later released although the only Christian among them is still being held by the group after she reportedly refused to renounce her faith. The decade-long conflict in northeast Nigeria has …

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In rare admission, US Africa Command says it killed 2 civilians in Somalia airstrike

The US military said it inadvertently killed two civilians over a year ago in an airstrike against al-Shabaab in Somalia

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South Africa to deploy 73,000 more troops to enforce COVID-19 lockdown

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa plans to deploy more than 73,000 extra troops to help implement a nationwide coronavirus lockdown

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UN sanctions Central African Republic rebel group leader Miskine

The UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Central African Republic rebel group FDPC leader Abdoulaye Miskine

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Nigeria records first coronavirus death in conflict-hit Borno state

Nigeria confirmed its first coronavirus infection in insurgency-hit Borno, after a medic with Doctors Without Borders died from COVID-19

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