'Mass grave' discovered in Nigerian town recaptured from Boko Haram

Soldiers from Niger and Chad who liberated the Nigerian town of Damasak from Boko Haram militants have discovered the bodies of at least 70 people.

In what appeared to be an execution site for the Islamist group, the bodies were strewn beneath the concrete bridge on one of the main roads leading out of the town. At least one had its head completely severed.

The bodies were partially mummified by the dry desert air, suggesting that the killings had taken place some time ago.

Boko Haram has killed thousands of people in a six-year insurgency aimed at establishing an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria.

Damasak was seized by the Islamist group in November but recaptured by troops from Niger and Chad on Saturday as part of a multinational effort to wipe out the militants.

Chadian soldiers, who said the bodies were discovered on Thursday, spoke of at least 100 corpses in the area around the dry river bed. A Reuters witness was able to count at least 70. Among the dead was the imam of the town. The Reuters witness said a strong smell of decomposition in many parts of town suggested there could be more bodies concealed there.

All but around 50 of the town’s residents had fled by the time Damasak was recaptured. Those who remained were mostly too old or too sick to leave.

One local resident, who survived the attack, spoke to FRANCE 24.

“People were in the town when Boko Haram attacked us. They fired at us. We ran into the bushes but they continued to fire. They chased some people and killed them,” he said.

Chad’s military spokesman Colonel Azem Bermandoa said the Chadians had asked Nigeria’s military to occupy the town, which lies close to the border with Niger, and would remain there until Nigerian troops arrived.

Pushing back Boko Haram

"Operation Mai Dounama", named after a 13th-century emperor of Borno province in northern Nigeria, aims to destroy Boko Haram bases close to Niger, a Nigerian army spokesman said Thursday.

The regional offensive launched this year with Chad, Niger and Cameroon comes as Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and biggest economy, prepares to hold presidential elections on March 28.

At the start of this year, Boko Haram controlled around 20 local government areas, a territory the size of Belgium. With the help of its foreign allies, Nigeria’s army said on Tuesday it had pushed the rebels out of all but three districts. Two out of three of the worst-hit northeast states -- Yobe and Adamawa -- have been declared "cleared" while the third, Borno, is expected to be liberated “within a month", the military said this week.

On Thursday, however, two security sources told Reuters that Boko Haram had killed at least 10 people in the town of Gamburu, on the border with Cameroon, demonstrating it can still attack civilians despite being forced into retreat.

The Islamist uprising, which initially began as a campaign against Western education, has claimed more than 13,000 lives since 2009.

The group recently allied themselves with the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

President Goodluck Jonathan has been criticised for not doing enough to tackle the insurgency. His challenger Muhammadu Buhari has campaigned on a reputation for toughness gained when he was military ruler of Nigeria in the 1980s.

Jonathan faces old rival Buhari in Nigeria presidential poll

Nigerians face a familiar choice between incumbent Goodluck Jonathan and 2011 runner-up Muhammadu Buhari when they head to the polls on Saturday to elect a new president.

Jonathan, 57, is running for another four years as head of Africa's most populous country.

His main rival, whom he defeated four years ago, is having a fourth shot at the presidency since democracy was restored in 1999.

While Jonathan secured a comfortable win in 2011, with 59 percent of the vote, analysts say this time the election is too close to call.

A former zoology professor, Jonathan became president in 2010 after the death of his predecessor Umaru Yar'Adua.

His spell in office has been marked by the rise of militant Islamist group Boko Haram, which has overrun vast swathes of northeastern Nigeria, killing more than 13,000 people and leaving some 1.5 million homeless.

Jonathan, who hails from the country’s mainly Christian south, has been accused of dragging his feet in the face of the worsening insurgency in the Muslim north.

The Nigerian president is also blamed for failing to tackle endemic corruption in the oil-rich country.

The vast majority of Nigeria's 173 million people live on less than two dollars a day while oil profits have gone to a privileged few.

But in a country with significant ethnic and religious faultlines, it is no surprise that Jonathan still enjoys strong support among southerners.

Security fears

Nor is it surprising that his main rival, 72-year-old Buhari, is a Muslim from the north.

A southerner has occupied the presidential villa for 13 of the past 16 years, and many northerners believe it is their turn to control the presidency.

A former army general, Buhari headed a military government in the 1980s, when he earned a reputation for his tough stance against nepotism and fraud.

As in previous campaigns, Buhari has placed the fight against corruption at the heart of his political platform.

But critics have cast doubt on the former general’s ability to steer Africa's top economy.

Should he lose again, Buhari's reaction will be crucial in a country often hit by post-election violence.

Four years ago, his defeat at Jonathan’s hands triggered a wave of clashes in which some 1,000 were killed.

Security forces have been placed on high alert ahead of Saturday's vote, which was delayed by six weeks after the military warned it could not guarantee security in areas threatened by Boko Haram insurgents.

Senegal opposition selects on-trial Wade as presidential candidate

Senegal’s main opposition party on Saturday chose Karim Wade as its candidate at the next presidential election, even though a court is about to rule on corruption charges that could put him behind bars for seven years.

Wade was a powerful minister when his father, Abdoulaye Wade, was president. The decision by the Senegalese Democratic Party congress raises the stakes ahead of the verdict, expected on Monday, where the prosecution is seeking a seven-year sentence.

Wade, who has been in detention since April 2013, won 257 votes of 268 cast at a party congress, although the next election is not due until 2017.

“The fact of choosing Karim Wade is just a way of trying to have an impact on the (court) verdict,” political analyst Babacar Justin Ndiaye said.

Abdoulaye Wade ruled the West African state from 2000 to 2012 before Macky Sall defeated him in a hotly-contested election. Sall said on Tuesday he would not tolerate trouble in Senegal, which has established itself as one of Africa’s most stable democracies.

Ethiopia burns 6.1 tonnes of ivory confiscated over decades

By REUTERS

PUBLISHED: 08:12 EST, 20 March 2015 | UPDATED: 08:12 EST, 20 March 2015

By Aaron Maasho

ADDIS ABABA, March 20 (Reuters) - Ethiopia burnt 6.1 tonnes of ivory on Friday, tusks and trinkets seized from poachers and traders over twenty years in a country that has lost 90 percent of its elephants in just three decades.

Police and park officers poured petrol on the stockpile at a ceremony on a hill in the middle of the capital's Gulele Botanic Garden. It was lit by Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen.

Yields of key cassava crop not keeping pace with Africa population growth: TRFN

Tue Mar 3, 2015 2:21pm GMT

By Chris Arsenault

ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Yields of cassava, a key crop feeding millions of people across Africa, are not keeping pace with population growth despite its tolerance for climate change, a leading scientist said.

More than half the world's cassava, a high-energy root crop, is grown in sub-Saharan Africa, where it is often the cheapest source of calories for poor people, said Clair Hershey, programme leader at the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

Child Brides Take Zimbabwe Govt to Court over Marriage Laws: TRFN

Thomson Reuters Foundation
LONDON - Two former child brides have taken Zimbabwe's government to court in a ground-breaking bid to get child marriages declared illegal and unconstitutional.

Chadian helicopters bomb Boko Haram on Nigeria-Niger border: Niger army

DIFFA, Niger (Reuters) - Two Chadian army helicopters bombed Nigerian Boko Haram positions on Sunday, killing several dozen militants near a village on the border with Niger, a senior Niger military official told Reuters.

Niger and Chadian soldiers have been fighting the Islamist militants in a joint mission with Nigeria and Cameroon since March 2, in a bid to end Boko Haram's six-year insurgency in northern Nigeria that is threatening regional stability.

The helicopters destroyed several vehicles and motorcycles carrying fighters in the Nigerian village of Djaboullam, which lies east across the border from the Niger town of Diffa, the Niger officer said.

"Niger and Chad had received intelligence that a group of Boko Haram fighters had gathered in the border village," the officer said.

The Niger military officer, who requested anonymity, said Boko Haram fighters had moved to Djaboullam after they were chased from other towns by the Nigerian army. Militants were also gathering in other border towns from where they routinely launch mortar rounds into Niger, he said.

"We know they are massing in Malam Fatori, waiting for us to come," he said, referring to another northeast Nigerian town about three kilometres (2 miles) from Bosso, the nearest town across the border in Niger.

The regional offensive launched this year comes as Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and biggest economy, prepares to hold elections on March 28.

The offensive has succeeded in driving the militants from several towns and districts they previously held. Chad and Niger forces captured the town of Damasak from the militants last week.

Executions, beatings and forced marriage: Life as a Boko Haram captive

YOLA, Nigeria — There is a house in Gulak, with a neem tree out front and a well in the back. Inside, dozens of women and girls spent days, weeks and even months waiting for a chance to escape their captors — members of the radical armed group Boko Haram.

Son of Senegal's ex-president Wade sentenced for corruption

A court in Senegal sentenced the son of former president Abdoulaye Wade to six years in prison for corruption on Monday. Karim Wade had hoped to be the Senegalese Democratic Party's presidential candidate in 2017.

UN: South Sudan rebels free 250 child soldiers

Geneva - A South Sudanese rebel group has freed 250 child soldiers - including a girl as young as nine, the UN children's agency said on Sunday, but warned that thousands were still being forced to fight.

The rebel Cobra Faction is also set to release another 400 child soldiers in the next two days under a deal with the government, out of total of 3 000 it holds, UNICEF said.

Somalia: Kenya to Build Separation Wall Along Porous Somali Border

Kenya will this week start construction of a separation wall along the border with Somalia as part of efforts to contain terror attacks, Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery has told the media. Mr. Nkaissery said his government will start the wall from the Mandera down to Wajir to reduce border entries.

Ebola outbreak 'over by August', UN suggests

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa will be over by August, the head of the UN Ebola mission has told the BBC. Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed admitted the UN had made mistakes in handling the crisis early on, sometimes acting "arrogantly". A year after the outbreak was officially declared, the virus has killed more than 10,000 people. The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres says a "global coalition of inaction" led to tragic consequences. Looking back over the year, the charity suggests its early calls for help were ignored by local governments and the World Health Organization

US missionary kidnapped in Nigeria is freed

An American missionary who was kidnapped in central Nigeria in February was safely released to authorities and church leaders on Friday, her Free Methodist Church said in a statement.

Reverend Phyllis Sortor, 71, a Free Methodist missionary to Nigeria, was handed over into the care of authorities and church leaders in Nigeria, the church said.

“We are deeply grateful to all who prayed for Phyllis’ safe return and praise God the family representative was able to secure her release,” David W. Kendall, for the Board of Bishops, said.

Sortor was abducted from a church academy compound in Emiworo, in Nigeria’s Kogi State, on Feb. 23, the church said

Scores of expatriates have been kidnapped in the past in southern and central Nigeria, where kidnapping is a major criminal enterprise that makes millions of dollars a year.

Central Kogi state has also had low level activity by Islamist militants linked to insurgent group Boko Haram, security sources said.

“As a matter of sound policy, and to help protect the many, many people who helped secure Phyllis’ freedom, we will have no comment concerning the efforts that were undertaken to secure her release,” the church said

Born to missionary parents, Sortor spent her childhood in Mozambique and spent years living in Seattle, in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, the church said. She and her husband, Jim, relocated to Rwanda for missionary work for nearly six years and went to Nigeria in 2005.

“She has also been instrumental in establishing schools in Kogi State for the children of Fulani herdsmen and in instituting grazing projects as one solution to long-term conflicts between Nigerian farmers and Fulani herdsmen,” the church said.

Her stepson, Richard Sortor, told NBC in an interview that he was overwhelmed by her release.

“When I was called at work and found about it today, you probably could have heard me yell around Seattle,” he said.

“Prayers are answered. Thank you very much, and you’ve got to believe. This doesn’t happen very often and we’re praising God.”

Dozens dead in Tanzania road collision

At least 41 dead and many others injured after a bus and lorry collide in busy road in southwest city of Iringa.

At least 41 people were killed and dozens injured when a bus and a truck collided on a busy road in southwest Tanzania, police said, warning that the death toll could rise.

Officers said many died when a container that was being ferried on the truck fell on the bus after impact, crushing the victims on a highway in Iringa, about 460km south-west of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

"The accident occurred when a passenger bus carrying more than 60 passengers crashed head-on with a container truck," Iringa police chief, Ramadhani Mungi, told the Reuters news agency by telephone from the scene of the accident on Wednesday.

"The container on the truck fell on the bus and crushed the passengers. Survivors of the accident have been rushed to hospital for emergency medical attention."

At least 23 people were injured, some of them seriously, raising concerns that the death toll could rise, police said.

Traffic accidents are common in east Africa's second-biggest economy, where buses are the main form of public transport between towns and roads are often poor.

Critics blame authorities of failing to enforce basic traffic regulations, while police say many of the accidents are caused by speeding.

36 Towns Now Retaken From Boko Haram, Says Nigeria

ABUJA:  Nigeria said today that 36 towns had been retaken from Boko Haram since the start of a four-nation military offensive, voicing hope that the operation could lead to the group's "total defeat".

Ivory Coast's former first lady Simone Gbagbo jailed

Ivory Coast's former first lady, Simone Gbagbo, has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for her role in the violence that followed the 2010 elections.

Gbagbo, 65, had been charged with undermining state security.Her husband, former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, is awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC). More than 3,000 people died in the violence that followed the presidential poll after the ex-leader refused to accept defeat to Alassane Ouattara. She and her husband were arrested in 2011 after troops stormed a bunker where the pair had taken refuge in the main city, Abidjan.

Inquiry into BP hostage crisis reveals security flaws

Serious security lapses may have contributed to deaths of 40 gas plant employees during 2013 attack in Algeria.

An inquest into the deaths of seven UK residents in a brazen attack on a major gas plant in Algeria partly operated by BP has exposed a litany of shortcomings in the provision of security at the site.

Deadly suicide bombing strikes Nigeria's Maiduguri

Attack in Borno state's capital leaves 17 dead as government dismisses Boko Haram's pledge of allegiance to ISIL.

A suspected female suicide bomber has killed at least 17 people in Maiduguri, capital of Nigeria's Borno state, military and hospital sources say. Tuesday's attack happened three days after a multiple bomb attack in the city killed more than 50 people.

IMF sees Zimbabwe economy weakening further in 2015

Mon Mar 9, 2015 5:50pm GMT

HARARE, March 9 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's economy is expected to weaken further this year after growing by 3.1 percent in 2014, the International Monetary Fund said on Monday, while the Zimbabwean finance minister said Harare expects to clear its arrears to the fund in the next year.

South Sudan unhappy with US support for sanctions

March 8, 2015 (JUBA)- South Sudanese presidency described as "extremely disappointing" the decision of the United States for the imposition of the United Nations sanctions against individual perceived to blocking attempts to bring peaceful settlement to the conflict.

Security Council votes unanimously, creating a system to impose sanctions on those blocking peace in South Sudan (Photo UN/Devra Berkowitz)

The Minister in the Office of the President Awan Guol Riak told a social gathering on Sunday that government was surprised and unhappy to realise that the United States, which supported the birth of the new nation, has turned her back by leading efforts to impose sanctions against the young nation and its leadership.

Rwanda’s Kagame arrives in France – but for UN meeting

Rwandan President Paul Kagame arrives in Paris on Friday to attend a meeting of the UN's cultural agency. But he is not expected to meet French officials while in the country, which he regularly accuses of complicity in the 1994 genocide.

Kagame has not visited France since September 2011 and Friday’s visit will be his first since an April 2014 lambast against French "participation” in the genocide during the 20th anniversary of the mass killings.

Rwandan officials have been careful to stress that Kagame will be in France for a meeting at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters and not for a bilateral visit.

"President Kagame will arrive in Paris on Friday for a meeting of the UNESCO ITU (International Telecommunication Union), where he is a co-chair of the broadband commission," Kagame spokeswoman Stephanie Nyombayire told AFP.

Relations between the countries were completely frozen from 2006 to 2009. But while bilateral diplomatic ties have resumed, tensions have simmered between the two countries.

Paris has repeatedly denied the accusations and insisted that French peacekeeping forces had worked to protect civilians during the genocide.

Accusations fly back and forth

A number of French civil society groups however have pushed for greater accountability over the murky period, when French peacekeepers under the French-led “Opération Turquoise” were posted in the region. Critics accused French peacekeeping force, positioned on the Rwandan border, of letting Hutu members of the Armed Forces of Rwanda cross the border into Zaire after massacring Tutsis.

In an interview with FRANCE 24 last year, Patrick Baudouin, president of the International Federation for Human Rights, said the “political will was long lacking” in France, as “Opération Turquoise” was an episode many French political leaders would rather forget.

Baudouin was speaking to FRANCE 24 ahead of the start of a landmark trial in Paris -- the first of its kind in France -- of a former Rwandan army captain charged with complicity in the 1994 genocide.

Pascal Simbikangwa was found guilty of complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

But French civil society groups have also accused Kagame of brutally crushing the opposition and senior opposition figures in the tiny African nation.

According to Augustin Sebahakwa, president of COVIGLA (Collectif des victimes des crimes de masse commis dans la région des Grands Lacs africains) Kagame’s administration has been committing "serious" human rights violation. "In Rwanda, people disappear or are arbitrarily imprisoned,” he told FRANCE 24, noting that a 2008 law criminalising Holocaust denial was being exploited to crush opposition figures.

On Friday, protestors are due to hold a rally against Kagame near the Paris offices of UNESCO.

African leader urges 'Marshall Plan' for countries worst hit by Ebola epidemic

The leaders of the West African countries worst hit by Ebola called for more aid to eradiate the disease and rebuild their shattered economies at an international conference in Brussels Tuesday.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma and Alpha Conde of Guinea urged the world to help their recovery as the number of new cases slows.

More than 9,700 people have died of the disease since the west African epidemic emerged in southern Guinea in December 2013, with nearly 24,000 people infected, according to the World Health Organization.

"The impact of Ebola on our economies has been profound. The most important long-term response to Ebola therefore rests in plans and strategies for economic recovery," Sirleaf told the EU-backed conference.

"There is no doubt this will require significant resources, even a Marshall Plan," she said, referring to the US-led aid plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II.

The International Monetary Fund in Washington approved on Monday funding and debt relief worth about $187 million for Sierra Leone for coming years, with $85 million of that to be disbursed immediately.

The charity Oxfam has previously made similar calls for a Marshall Plan-type effort to help stricken west Africa.

The countries at the centre of the Ebola epidemic are forecast to lose 12 percent of their combined gross domestic product this year, according to World Bank estimates.

In addition, their health sectors have been partially wiped out by the epidemic or forced to divert resources to fighting Ebola at the expense of other diseases like measles, malaria and AIDS.

'No complacency'

The conference gathered the three African leaders plus more than 60 delegations including the European Union, China, the United States, Cuba and Australia, plus the United Nations, the World Bank and other international organisations.

The African leaders repeated a pledge made last month to eradicate the disease by mid-April.

"We must guard against complacency. There will not be total victory until we get to" zero cases, Koroma said. "We must be ever-ready to aggressively combat this oubtreak."

UN Ebola envoy David Nabarro said on Monday that the number of new cases had declined from around 900 a week to 100, but that cases appeared to be climbing back up in the coastal regions of Sierra Leone and Guinea.

"The purpose of this conference is getting to zero" in terms of human cases, an EU official involved in the talks said separately, but added: "The curve is flattening out, but definitely it is not at zero."

Officials pointed to the fact that Nigeria, Senegal and Mali have all managed to show that Ebola cases can be reduced to zero after they too were hit by the virus.

Countries around the world have so far pledged $4.9 billion to fight Ebola, with $2.4 billion disbursed until now, officials said.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will host a further conference in April in Washington to see if there are still financial gaps, followed by another called by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in May, Nabarro said.

Ebola, one of the deadliest pathogens known to man, is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person showing symptoms such as fever or vomiting.