12, June 2017
Congo Kinshasa: Gunmen raid prison, 900 escape, 11 die in exchange of fire 0
Eleven people were killed and more than 900 inmates escaped Sunday after unidentified assailants attacked a jail in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s restive east, an official said. “The Kangwayi prison in Beni was attacked at 3:30 pm (1330 GMT) by assailants whose identity is not yet known,” Julien Paluku, the governor of North Kivu Province, told reporters.
“In the exchange of fire between security forces and the attackers, authorities have (counted) 11 dead including eight members of the security forces,” Paluku said, adding, “For the moment, out of 966 prisoners, there are only 30 left in the prison.” Paluku said the Beni area and the neighboring town of Butembo had been put under curfew from 6:30 pm. “Only police officers and soldiers should be out from this time,” he said.
The attack came a day after the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) attacked a police station and a prosecutor’s office in the capital, Kinshasa, killing a police officer and seriously injuring four others after a series of similar strikes over the past three weeks. It also comes after two jailbreaks in the vast, unstable central African nation in the past month.
The violence has erupted as the Democratic Republic of the Congo is mired in a deep political crisis tied to President Joseph Kabila’s hold on power. Tension has been mounting across the vast mineral-rich nation of 71 million people since December last year, when Kabila’s second and final term officially ended.
Under a power-sharing agreement brokered by the influential Catholic Church on New Year’s Eve, Kabila is due to remain in office until elections at the end of 2017. However, Kabila earlier this month seemed to back away from the deal to hold a vote this year.
“I have not promised anything at all,” he told the German weekly Der Spiegel in a rare media interview. “I wish to organize elections as soon as possible.”
(Source: AFP)
12, June 2017
Senator John McCain says America was better under Obama 0
Republican Senator John McCain has said American leadership was stronger under President Barack Obama, according to a report. McCain made the remarks in an interview with The Guardian published on Sunday while responding to a question.
Asked if America’s stance on the global stage was better during the Obama administration, McCain responded, “As far as American leadership is concerned, yes.”
McCain, the chairman on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has often harshly criticized the policies of Republican President Donald Trump.
Nearly a month after Trump was sworn in as president on January 20, McCain said “in many respects this administration is in disarray and they’ve got a lot of work to do.”
In March, McCain denounced Trump’s claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, saying either he has to retract it or provide evidence of the allegation.
But McCain, who lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential election, had also been very critical of the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda.
The Guardian described the Arizona senator as “visibly irked” when he was asked about Trump’s recent Twitter assault on London Mayor Sadiq Khan, which came shortly after a deadly attack that left eight dead and dozens injured in the heart of the British capital.
“What do you think the message is? The message is that America doesn’t want to lead,” McCain said. “They are not sure of American leadership, whether it be in Siberia or whether it be in Antarctica.”
Trump accused Khan, the first Muslim mayor of the city, of offering a “pathetic excuse” for remarks that the US president misinterpreted about policing in response to the attack that left several people dead.
Trump tweeted that Khan had to “think fast” to excuse comments that Londoners need not be alarmed after the deadly attack.
The US president’s provocative comments caused outrage among top British officials. Even British Prime Minister Theresa May, a Conservative, expressed her support for the mayor, a member of the Labour Party.
Source: Presstv