More than 120 people were killed Tuesday as the worst floods in years battered DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa following an all-night downpour, authorities said in a provisional assessment.

Major roads in the centre of Kinshasa, a city of some 15 million people, were submerged for hours, and a key supply route was cut off.

Earlier in the day, city police chief General Sylvano Kasongo gave a provisional toll of at least 55 dead in a statement to AFP, concentrated especially on hillside locations where there had been landslips.

However, the toll was then revised upwards to at least 100, according to the country’s state television. 

An AFP reporter saw the bodies of nine members of the same family – including young children – who had died after the collapse of their home in the Binza Delvaux district.

Source: AFP

At least four people were killed in an ongoing attack by Al Shabaab militants who laid siege to a popular hotel in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu overnight, a national security agency official told AFP on Monday.

Gunfire and explosions could still be heard more than 12 hours after the militants stormed the Villa Rose hotel near the presidential palace in a hail of bullets.

Mohamed Dahir, an official from the national security agency, told AFP the gunmen were holed up in a room at the hotel surrounded by government forces.

“So far we have confirmed the death of four people”, he said, adding that others had been rescued from the besieged venue.

Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab militants stormed the hotel on Sunday using guns and explosives, with a police officer saying at the time that some government officials escaped from its windows.

“There is still heavy gunfire inside the hotel and we hear explosions from time to time … we are still in our houses since last night, when the siege started,” Ismail Haaji, who lives near the hotel, told Reuters.

Special forces units, known as Haramcad and Gaashaan, had taken over operations, said a police officer at the scene who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The fighters who launched the attack are still fighting inside the hotel, and they are fighting with the forces of Haramcad and Gaashaan, and security forces are trying to rescue the people trapped inside the hotel,” the officer added.

Government officials in Mogadishu frequently use the Villa Rose hotel for meetings.

Somalia’s parliament said it had postponed a scheduled session for both of its houses.

“All members of parliament of both councils are being informed that today’s scheduled meeting has been postponed,” it said in a statement on its Facebook page.

Al Shabaab, which is seeking to topple the government and establish its own rule based on an extreme interpretation of Islamic law, frequently stages attacks in Mogadishu and elsewhere.

Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who was elected this year, has launched a military offensive against the group.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)

Traders working on Cameroon’s border with Equatorial Guinea say Malabo has partially reopened border traffic a day after partial election results indicate Teodoro Obiang Nguema will extend his 43-year rule. The 80-year-old Nguema, the world’s longest-ruling head of state, came to power in a 1979 coup and has since ruled the west African nation with an iron fist.

Merchants from Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria say they were permitted to enter Equatorial Guinea Wednesday.

Equatorial Guinea closed its borders October 30 ahead of its November 20 elections and said it wanted to prevent what it called “infiltration of mercenaries who want to destabilize the elections.”

Cameroon-born building material exporter Pierre Marie Mihamle says several hundred traders entered Equatorial Guinea a day after the central African state’s government announced November 20 elections results.

He says the re-election of Obiang as president of Equatorial Guinea means the movement of goods and persons to the central African state will be frequently interrupted or meticulously controlled. Mihamle says foreign nationals who speak against Obiang will be chased from Equatorial Guinea.

Mihamle said Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Congo Brazzaville are members of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community, or CEMAC, but Obiang regularly orders the deportation of foreign citizens, citing national economic and security concerns.

Obiang’s ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea, or the PDGE, is winning over 98% of the vote in presidential, legislative, and municipal elections held Sunday, according to preliminary election results released this week by Equatorial Guinea’s interior minister, Clemente Engonga Nguema Onguene. The results indicate that Obiang’s challengers, Andrés Esono Ondo of the CPDS party and former ally Buenaventura Monsuy Asumu of the PCSD, got 1.34% and 0.35% of the vote.

The final results of the one-round election will be announced November 26, according to Equatorial Guinea’s electoral laws. The 80-year-old Obiang is Africa’s longest serving leader. He took power from his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, in an August 1979 coup.

Ngah Derrick is an international relations specialist at Cameroon’s National Institute of International Relations. He says Equatorial Guinea should not expect any changes from Obiang, who has ruled the country with an iron fist.

“Obiang has done everything to eternalize power,” said Derrick. “The reigning vice president of the country that is his son is the vice president of the Republic and it tells you that he is gradually grooming his son in order to be able to ascend to the highest office of magistracy of the state in Equatorial Guinea in case he [Obiang] becomes tired, sick or in case of death.”

Obiang’s son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, is Equatorial Guinea’s vice president. Equatorial Guinea’s political opposition says Obiang’s rule is marked by favoritism, persecution and torture of political opponents. Santiago Oliveira, who led Obiang’s election campaign in Cameroon, denies the charges. He says the long-serving central African state’s leader should be credited with bringing development to his country.

He says Obiang has transformed Equatorial Guinea from a very poor and heavily indebted country it was in 1980, to an emerging economy today.

Oliveira said Equatorial Guinea civilians who voted in Cameroon should wait for Malabo to declare election results. He said all civilians should rally behind Obiang as he continues managing affairs of the state in the country’s general interest.

The United Nations says Equatorial Guinea has an annual oil revenue of more than $3 billion, but most of its 1.5 million people live in abject poverty. The nation’s opposition parties say most of the wealth is in the hands of Obiang, his family and friends.

Source: VOA

New police statistics show more than 7,000 people have been murdered by criminal gangs in a span of three months across South Africa.

On Wednesday, South Africa’s parliamentary portfolio committee on police heard details of the crime statistics, recording those crimes reported to the South African Police Service (SAPS) from July 1 to September 30.

Quarterly crime statistics showed a rise in murder, rape and kidnapping figures compared with the same period last year. The murder rate rose 14 percent during the period, compared with the same timeframe in 2021, when 6,163 people were killed. Virtually 1,000 women and more than 550 children were among those murdered during the period.

More than 13,000 women were also victims of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and 1,277 women were victims of attempted murder.

Rapes, in a country notorious for sex assaults against women and children, also recorded a huge jump. Kidnappings doubled to more than 4,000 in the three months, compared to the same time last year.

Commenting on violence against women and children, Police Minister Bheki Cele said, “The rate at which women are abused, violated and some killed in South Africa remains worrying and unacceptable.”

“The crime statistics again show that we as communities continue to fail to protect some of the most vulnerable in society: our children,” Cele said.

Carjackings rose 24 percent to more than 6,000.

The police minister promised that 10,000 new recruits would be ready to join the police force before the Christmas and New Year period, when crime typically rises. Their deployment “will intensify police visibility during the festive season and beyond,” he said. “Nothing will replace fighting crime [better] than warm bodies.”

Andrew Whitfield, a lawmaker with the largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, however, called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to fire Cele. “The bloodbath of violent crime remains out of control across the country with millions of people living in fear.”

Source: Presstv

The M23 rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has pushed into fresh territory, officials said, after a regional bloc issued a call to lay down arms.

A resurgent group mostly drawn from Congolese Tutsis, the M23 has swept across North Kivu province, triggering a humanitarian crisis and a showdown between the DRC and Rwanda, which Kinshasa accuses of supporting the rebels.

In recent weeks, fighters have been edging closer towards Goma, an important commercial hub of one million people on the border with Rwanda.

But local residents and administrative officials told AFP that the armed group had also begun a push westwards into Masisi territory.

“The rebels are here,” a resident of Tongo, a town in wildlife haven Virunga National Park, which lies on the road leading to Masisi territory, said on Thursday.

An official in the local administration, who requested anonymity, also told AFP late Wednesday that M23 fighters had entered his office.

M23 fighters and Congolese troops were clashing this week in Kibumba, which is just 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Goma.

A security official, who declined to be named, said Thursday the M23 now controlled the settlement.

The DRC’s army has yet to communicate officially about the rebel advance.

On Wednesday, the head of the newly created East African Community (EAC) military force in eastern DR Congo, Jeff Nyagah, said that rebels that must pursue political negotiations and disarm.

“Those who fail or refuse to voluntarily disarm, then we’ll go for them,” the Kenyan general warned.

Nyagah also vowed that the EAC force would protect Goma.

Despite official denials from Kigali, an unpublished report for the United Nations seen by AFP in August pointed to Rwandan involvement with the M23.

The report also said the M23 plans to capture Goma in order to extract political concessions from the government in Kinshasa.

The M23 first leapt to prominence in 2012 when it captured Goma, before being driven out and going to ground.

But the rebel group re-emerged late last year, claiming that the DRC had failed to honour a pledge to integrate its fighters into the army, among other grievances.

Source: AFP

A French-Australian hostage kidnapped in eastern Chad has been released and is in “good health”, the Chadian Prime Minister announced in a tweet Sunday.

“The kidnapped Franco-Australian hostage… has just been found and taken to safety in good health,” said Prime Minister Saleh Kebzabo, congratulating “the defence and security forces for this quick and successful action”.

The individual had been kidnapped on Friday “in the afternoon of 28 October”, Chadian authorities said Saturday, adding they had “mobilised all security and human means to get hold of the kidnappers”.

“The hostage was released in the province of Tibesti (North), in an area bordering Niger and Libya by our defence and security forces,” Ayoub Abdelkerim Abdoulaye, governor of the eastern province of Wadi Fira where the abduction took place, told AFP. 

Chadian authorities also reported they worked in Oryx Park on behalf of the Sahara Conservation Fund (SCF), a wildlife conservation NGO.

The park is located in the Ouadi Rime-Ouadi Achim wildlife reserve which extends over 77,950 square kilometres.

The French foreign ministry said Saturday it was “aware of the kidnapping of one of our citizens in Chad” and it was “in contact with their family, and also with the authorities in Chad, in order to secure their speedy release”.

Source: AFP

Officials from Cameroon and Congo on Tuesday began meeting in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital, to discuss the border demarcation issue between the two countries.

This is the first time that experts from the two sides, who are members of the technical sub-commission in charge of the border demarcation, met to discuss the border issue.

“We also expect that this meeting will provide a legal framework to facilitate the demarcation of our common borders,” said Cameroon’s Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji at the beginning of the meeting. He believed that the meeting will help trace the border between the two countries and determine the geographical distinctions, among other issues.

Both countries want to make the border “an instrument of peace and shared development,” the minister said and stressed that there is no border dispute between the two countries.

The two sides are expected to finalize a working document that will help the experts when they visit the border Friday.

Source: Xinhuanet

The UN children’s agency UNICEF on Saturday condemned an Ethiopian air strike that “hit a kindergarten” in the rebel-held Tigray region, killing at least four people including two children.

The government denied targeting civilian areas in Friday’s air raid and accused the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) of staging deaths.

 “UNICEF strongly condemns the air strike …  (that) hit a kindergarten, killing several children, and injuring others,” the agency’s executive director Catherine Russell said on Twitter.

“Yet again, an escalation of violence in northern Ethiopia has caused children to pay the heaviest price. For almost two years, children and their families in the region have endured the agony of this conflict. It must end.”

The bombardment came just days after fighting erupted on Tigray’s southern border between government forces and TPLF rebels, ending a five-month truce and dashing hopes of peace talks.

The TPLF said the air strike, the first in many months on Tigray, demolished a kindergarten and hit a civilian residential area.

The government said only military sites were targeted and accused the TPLF of “dumping fake body bags in civilian areas” to maximise outrage.

Kibrom Gebreselassie, chief clinical director at Mekele’s Ayder Referral Hospital, told AFP four people died in the strike, including two children.

Nine others were receiving treatment for injuries, he said.

Tigrai TV, a local network, said the death toll had reached seven and broadcast footage of mangled playground equipment and a brightly painted compound in ruins at the apparent scene of the strike.

The claims could not be independently verified as access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted.

‘Respect international law’ 

The EU condemned the strike and called for a peaceful settlement to the 21-month war.

“I urge again for the respect of International Humanitarian Law. Civilians are #NotATarget,” the EU commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarcic, said on Twitter.

In March, the UN said at least 304 civilians had been killed in airstrikes in the three months prior in northern Ethiopia.

The UN human rights office has warned that disproportionate attacks against non-military targets could amount to war crimes.

Ethiopia’s air force operates the only known military aircraft over the country’s skies.

A truce in March paused the worst of the bloodshed and allowed aid convoys to return slowly to Tigray, where the UN says millions are severely hungry, and fuel and medicine are in short supply.

But on Wednesday, the warring sides each accused the other of firing first as fresh offensives erupted along Tigray’s southern border.

The flare-up alarmed the international community, which has been pushing both sides to peacefully resolve the war in Africa’s second most populous nation.

The conflict has killed untold numbers, with widespread reports of atrocities including mass killings and sexual violence.

Abiy sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 to topple the TPLF, accusing the region’s former ruling party of orchestrating attacks on federal army camps.

Source: AFP