Africa

7, June 2016

50,000 flee Boko Haram in Niger ⁰

Tens of thousands of people have fled a town in the troubled southeastern Niger following deadly attacks by Takfiri Boko Haram terrorist group, the UN refugee agency says. Adrian Edwards, the spokesman for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that some 50,000 people fled the town of Bosso in the country’s troubled Diffa region near the Nigerian border.

The spokesman noted that most of those fleeing the violence walked toward the village of Toumour, which is located some 30 kilometers west of Bosso. “Many people are reportedly traumatized and worried about their safety,” he said. The UN sources say people are sleeping in the open and urgently need shelter and other assistance.

Boko Haram militants first took the town of Bosso on Friday in an attack in which 30 soldiers from Niger and two from Nigeria were killed. A total of 55 militants from the Nigeria-based militant group were also killed during the fierce fighting. The terrorists reportedly torched military barracks, police facilities and looted shops during the terror campaign in the town. The ambush and looting came as Niger’s army was preparing to attack Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region, which straddles Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

UN figures show that the violence by Boko Haram militants have displaced more than 240,000 people across the Diffa region over past months. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recently said that more than nine million people living in the Lake Chad region are in dire need of food aid, blaming Boko Haram for triggering the unrest in the area.

Presstv

6, June 2016

Camair-Co Palaver: MPs call for a speed up in the recovery process ⁰

The Speaker of the National Assembly, Yéguié Cavaye Djibril has voiced concerns about the goings-on in the Cameroon Airlines Corporation (Camair-Co). Some reports have suggested that MPs from both the ruling CPDM party and the SDF opposition have decided to speak with one voice on the poor bill of health of Camair-Co. Speaker Cavaye Djibril fired the first salvo on June the 2^nd during his opening speech to the House when he observed that the company was indeed “sick”.

Honorable Joshua Osih, Vice President of the SDF parliamentary group noted that something should done and done in a hurry to remedy the situation. Joshua Osih reminded the House that Camair-Co belongs to the Cameroonian taxpayer. Our National Assembly correspondent who contributed to this report revealed the MPs are worried about the airlines company. The MPs want an immediate speed up in the recovery process of Camair-Co. An audit of the company has already been ordered.

CIR

6, June 2016

Raila Odinga destabilizing Kenya again!!!!! ⁰

At least two people have lost their lives and six others sustained injuries during clashes between Kenya’s police and protesters demanding the dissolution of the country’s electoral commission prior to next year’s presidential election. The casualties occurred on Monday in the western Kenyan city of Kisumu as police opened fire to disperse protesters during the latest in a series of rallies by opposition groups and their supporters demanding that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) be scrapped for allegedly being biased.

Carrying banners, the protesters who are all Raila Odinga loyalists blocked the roads with burning tires and stones in both Kisumu and the country’s capital of Nairobi, and chanted the slogan “IEBC must go.” “We have confirmed two people shot dead. We are yet to establish the circumstances,” said Dennis Onyango, a spokesman for Kenya’s main opposition group, the Coalitions for Reforms and Democracy (CORD). The Red Cross in the East African country said six protesters suffering from gunshot wounds had been taken to hospital.

Presstv/CIR

6, June 2016

SOPECAM Affair: Board Chairman 1, GM 0 ⁰

The General Manager of the Cameroon News and Publishing Corporation (SOPECAM) Marie-Claire Nnana was recently taken aback when the board chairman, Joseph Le, Deputy Director of President Biya’s civil cabinet put his foot down at the ongoing crisis meeting between the two parties to insist that he can still appoint persons within the corporation without holding any board meeting.

Explaining his position of authority, Joseph LE has signed decisions in four areas of SOPECAM. The decisions that were read over state radio and television, promoted Ignatius Ozela Claude to technical director, Koume Honore, parachuted to the Sales and Marketing department, Ngane Gustave now heads Administration and Finance while Olinga Biyo’o Georges leads Management Control service.

Cameroon Tribune, the newspaper edited by SOPECAM published just a part of the Joseph Le decision bearing the appointments of Ozela Claude Ignatius and Koume Honore leaving out the names of Ngane Gustav and Olinga Biyo’o. An aide to the GM was quoted as saying the Deputy Director of the Civil Cabinet at the Presidency of the Republic was staging a coup at SOPECAM. Marie-Claire Nnana was heard murmuring privately that what Joseph Le has done is in her view totally irresponsible. Cameroon Intelligence Report understands Marie-Claire Nnana is out of the country on a CPDM mission. Our source at SOPECAM hinted that it will need the intervention of the head of state for things to normalize at SOPECAM.

6, June 2016

Gunmen kill female Somali journalist ⁰

Unidentified gunmen have killed yet another journalist in the Somali capital city of Mogadishu, as acts of murder persist against members of the media in the conflict-ridden African country. Sagal Salad Osman, a presenter and producer for the state-run Radio Mogadishu station, was gunned down outside a university in Mogadishu’s northwestern neighborhood of Hodan. The assailants managed to flee the scene after the shooting, her colleagues said.

“Three men armed with pistols killed (her)… We heard gunfire and we rushed to the scene, the gunmen had already escaped,” Major Nur Ali, a police officer, said. “She was rushed to hospital but she died on the way. They killed her near a college campus where she studied. We believe al-Shabab is behind her killing,” he added, referring to the Takfiri militant group active in Somalia.

Ali Abdulkadir, who works at the Muqdisho radio station, said, “We are very much devastated about the news of her death and we don’t know why she was killed.” Last December, Hindiyo Haji Mohamed, a journalist for Radio Mogadishu and Somali National TV networks, sustained grave injuries when a bomb planted inside her car went off in Mogadishu. She later died of her injuries. Two men convicted of the act of terror were executed in April.

Presstv

5, June 2016

Boko Haram kills 32 Niger soldiers ⁰

Boko Haram Takfiri militants have killed 32 soldiers in an attack on a military post on Niger’s border with Nigeria. “Hundreds of assailants” attacked a military post at the rural town of Bosso on Friday evening, Niger’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The statement gave the “provisional toll” of 30 Nigerien and two Nigerian soldiers killed and nearly 70 wounded. Earlier in the day, media outlets reported that the Nigeria-based militants had captured the rural town located in southeastern Niger.

4, June 2016

Boko Haram captures town in southeastern Niger ⁰

Militants of the Nigeria-based Boko Haram Takfiri group have reportedly captured a rural town in southeastern Niger after launching a large-scale offensive in the troubled border area. Local residents said Boko Haram extremists mounted an all-out attack against Bosso, located around 1,365 kilometers (848 miles) from Niger’s capital, Niamey, on Friday afternoon, forcing Nigerien military forces to withdraw from the area without any resistance.

On November 25, 2015, 18 people were killed, eleven hurt, and 100 homes torched in a Boko Haram militant attack against the village of Wogom close to Bosso. A humanitarian worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Takfiris came from Nigeria and crossed the Komadougou Yobe River, which lies on the border between Niger and Nigeria.

Militants and bombers from Boko Haram terrorist group have staged repeated attacks in Niger’s southeastern region of Diffa near Nigeria since February, leaving hundreds of people dead. Boko Haram started its campaign of militancy in 2009 with the aim of toppling the central government in Nigeria. It has so far taken the lives of at least 17,000 people and forced over 2.5 million others to flee their homes.

The terror group has pledged allegiance to Daesh Takfiri terrorists, who are mainly wreaking havoc in Syria and Iraq. Boko Haram has spread its attacks from northeastern Nigeria, its traditional stronghold, into neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon.

Presstv

3, June 2016

Angola’s President appoints daughter as head of oil company ⁰

Angola’s President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has appointed his daughter as head of the state oil company Sonangol.

Isabel dos Santos, named by Forbes magazine as Africa’s richest woman, worth an estimated $3.3bn (£2.3bn), takes on the job after the entire board was sacked by her father in April.

Angola and Nigeria are Africa’s largest oil producers. Critics accuse President dos Santos, who has ruled since 1979, of being increasingly authoritarian.

BBC

3, June 2016

France delivers Mistral warship to Egypt ⁰

Egypt has taken delivery of the first of two French Mistral warships as part of a military deal between Paris and Cairo in 2015. France agreed last year to sell two Mistral helicopter carriers to Egypt for $1 billion, which were originally intended for sale to Russia.

The first warship, named Gamal Abdel Nasser after Egypt’s late president, is reportedly headed toward Alexandria where it is expected to arrive within weeks. During a handover ceremony in the western French port of Saint-Nazaire on Thursday, Egyptian Defense Minister Sedky Sobhi said the second warship would arrive in September.

“It [the warship] increases our combat capabilities and our ability to carry out long-term missions at sea…and we are awaiting on the arrival of the second in September,” he said.

Presstv

2, June 2016

Ivory Coast: Attempted rape of former first lady filmed ⁰

Ivory Coast’s former first lady Simone Gbagbo says she suffered attempted rape while in detention back in 2011, and claims French soldiers deployed in the country also filmed the attempted rape. During the first day of her trial on Tuesday, Simone denied a court’s charges of crimes against humanity during the 2010 wave of violence, saying, “Mr. Chairman, I have been brought before this court for crimes I did not commit. I have been accused of things that are not established as facts, alluding to my direct involvement in the violence.”

“Personally, I arrived at the Golf hotel (Ouattara’s headquarters) with my buttocks exposed, naked, and I suffered several attempts to rape me in broad daylight … and all this in the presence of French soldiers who were filming this,” she said. According to the prosecution, the wife of former president Laurent Gbagbo was part of a small group of party officials from Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) that organized violence and rights abuses against supporters of her husband’s presidential rival — Alassane Ouattara — in an attempt to keep him in power. She also faces allegations of crimes against prisoners of war, crimes against the civilian population and crimes against humanity.

“The FPI put in place a crisis cell in January 2011 that met at the presidential residence and constituted the organ charged with planning and organizing the repression,” an indictment read in the court stated. The trial is the West African country’s first for crimes against humanity and is being held in a domestic court after the government rejected her extradition to the International Criminal Court (ICC), claiming that the Ivorian justice system is now capable of judging her. However, her lawyers did not immediately enter a plea on Tuesday and challenged the court’s jurisdiction for several hours, noting that Simone could not be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity” and “war crimes” committed in 2011 because these charges had not been included in Ivory Coast’s penal code since March 2015.

But prosecutors hit back at the criticism on Wednesday with Abidjan’s chief prosecutor, Aly Yeo, saying, “The trial that began yesterday will be a fair trial that will respect the rights of the defense, a transparent trial.” During the court session, Ivory Coast’s “Iron Lady” also claimed that Ouattara, now president of Ivory Coast, instigated the bloodshed. “The post-election crisis was born from the refusal of Alassane Ouattara, with the help of French authorities, to respect the constitution of Ivory Coast,” she claimed.

More than 3,000 people were killed in the post-poll civil war that broke out when Gbagbo refused to concede defeat to Ouattara in the November 2010 run-off election. The violence petered out when troops stormed the bunker where the Gbagbo couple had taken refuge in the country’s main city, Abidjan, and arrested the two.

Simone Gbagbo is currently serving a 20-year sentence which was handed to her last year for charges on “endangering state security” — a sentence that was upheld on appeal this month — and Laurent Gbagbo is facing trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague on charges linked to the conflict.

Culled from Presstv