At least 312 people have been killed and more than 2,000 left homeless when a mudslide and heavy flooding hit Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, leaving hospitals struggling to cope. Red Cross spokesman Patrick Massaquoi told AFP the toll could rise further as his team continued to survey disaster areas in Freetown, where heavy rains have caused homes to disappear under water and triggered a mudslide.

An AFP journalist at the scene on Monday saw bodies being carried away and houses submerged in two areas of the city, where roads were turned into churning rivers of mud and corpses washed up on the streets. Bodies were spread out on the floor of a morgue, Sinneh Kamara, a coroner technician at the Connaught Hospital mortuary, told the national broadcaster.

“The capacity at the mortuary is too small for the corpses,” he told the Sierra Leone National Broadcasting Corp. Kamara urged the health department to deploy more ambulances, saying his mortuary only has four.

Sierra Leone’s national television broadcaster interrupted its regular programming to show scenes of people trying to retrieve their loved ones’ bodies. Others were seen carting relatives’ remains in rice sacks to the morgue. Military personnel have been deployed to help in the rescue operation currently ongoing, officials said.
“It is likely that hundreds are lying dead underneath the rubble,” Vice President Victor Foh told Reuters at the scene of the mudslide in the mountain town of Regent, adding that a number of illegal buildings had been erected in the area.

“The disaster is so serious that I myself feel broken,” he added. “We’re trying to cordon (off) the area (and) evacuate the people.” People cried as they looked at the damage under steady rain, gesturing toward a muddy hillside where dozens of houses used to stand, a Reuters witness said. Mudslides and floods are fairly common during the rainy season in West Africa, where deforestation and poor town planning put residents at risk.

(Source: Agencies)

Zambia plans to drop treason charges against the country’s main opposition leader and free him from prison on Monday under a deal brokered by the Commonwealth secretary-general, government and legal sources told Reuters. The United Party for National Development (UPND) leader Hakainde Hichilema and five others were arrested in April and charged with treason after Hichilema’s convoy failed to make way for President Edgar Lungu’s motorcade.

Hichilema’s trial had been due to begin on Monday in the capital Lusaka but two sources said the prosecution would apply to the court to discontinue the case. The case has stoked political tensions in Zambia, seen as one of Africa’s more stable and functional democracies, following a bruising election last year.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland visited Zambia last week and told reporters she had met Lungu and Hichilema separately and that the two leaders had agreed to a process of dialogue facilitated by her office.
“That process of dialogue, which the Commonwealth Secretary-General Baroness Patricia Scotland is leading with the help of Catholic bishops, starts with the release of the opposition leader from prison,” a government source told Reuters on Sunday, referring to local religious leaders.

“The state will discontinue the treason case in the public interest as both the opposition leader and the head of state are committed to burying their past and starting dialogue envisaged to help address some of the issues the opposition raised after the 2016 elections so that the 2021 elections are better held.”

A spokesman for the UPND said the party was unaware of any plan to release Hichilema. “We don’t have anything on that. We are not privy to the agreement that was entered into between the two leaders and therefore can only wait for tomorrow,” UPND spokesman Charles Kakoma said.

The UPND later said that Hichilema and his co-accused were transferred from Mukobeko Maximum Prison – about 130 km (81 miles) north of the capital – to Lusaka Central Prison.

“They were airlifted this morning and have arrived safely in Lusaka,” the party said. The government source said Lungu is committed to all aspects of the dialogue agreed between the president and the opposition leader, which include promoting peace, stability and public good.

“An overt act serious enough to warrant prosecution exists but the public interest seems to be the overriding consideration, so a nolle prosequi will be entered,” a public prosecutor told Reuters, using the legal term for the discharge of a case.

The southern African country has always been relatively stable but relations between the government and the opposition have been fraught since August when Lungu’s Patriotic Front (PF) beat the UPND in a presidential election marred by violence and which the opposition says was rigged.

It was the second time that Lungu beat Hichilema, an economist and businessman popularly known by his initials “HH”, in a presidential election by a razor-thin margin. Lee Habasonda, a political science lecturer at the University of Zambia, said Hichilema’s release would ease political tension, improve Zambia’s image with investors and end mounting international pressure on Lungu’s government.

“In the face of Zambia seeking international assistance, it is time to make such a move because the state does not lose anything by releasing the opposition leader and dealing with him in other ways,” Habasonda told Reuters.
In June, church leaders including those from the influential Catholic Church, called for Hichilema’s release. Last month Lungu invoked emergency powers to deal with “acts of sabotage” by his political opponents, after fire gutted the country’s biggest market.

Under emergency laws police can prohibit public meetings, detain suspects longer than usual, search without a warrant, close roads, impose curfews and restrict certain people’s movements. The UPND has said Lungu’s use of emergency powers is unnecessary and a ploy to make it easier for police to arrest its supporters.

On Thursday police freed another opposition leader, United Progressive Party leader Saviour Chishimba, after holding him in detention for a week on accusations of defaming Lungu, an offence that carries a maximum five-year prison term. Chishimba hit the headlines in July after criticizing Lungu’s decision to impose emergency powers and suggesting the president should go to hospital for mental tests.

When he invoked the emergency powers, Lungu said the measure would safeguard investments in the country, which is Africa’s second-biggest copper producer and is currently in talks with the International Monetary Fund over a financial aid package. The president said the IMF was free to terminate the negotiations if it considered his actions were wrong.

(Source: Reuters)

A train collision near Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria has killed 36 people and injured 123 others, Egyptian officials say. The two trains collided head on –one was coming from the capital of Cairo, to the south of Alexandria, and the other was coming from the city of Port Said, located on the northern tip of the Suez Canal.

The head of the ambulance services in the Alexandria’s western sector, Dr. Mohamed Abu Homs, said the collision took place in the district of Khorshid, southeast of the city.

Abu Homs said he fears the death toll and the number of injured could rise further. Egypt’s railway system has a poor safety record, mostly blamed on decades of badly maintained equipment and poor management. Footage from the scene broadcast on state television showed dozens of people crowding around the damaged train cars, with dead bodies strewn on the ground.

State television, citing transport ministry officials, reported that the crash was probably caused by a malfunction in one of the trains that brought it to a halt on the rails. It was the deadliest train accident in the North African country since a November 2013 collision between a train and a bus killed 27 people south of Cairo.

(Source: Agencies)

The UN aid chief has voiced alarm over possible genocide in the Central African Republic (CAR), which has been hit by a fresh wave of clashes between armed groups in recent months. At a UN briefing on Monday, the world body’s Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien said renewed fighting in the CAR are “the early warning signs of genocide” there.

He was speaking following his recent trip to the CAR and the Democratic Republic of Congo. “We must act now, not pare down the UN’s effort, and pray we don’t live to regret it,” he said. Some 180,000 people have been driven from their homes this year, bringing the total number of the displaced in the Central African Republic to well over half a million, he said.

O’Brien said it was time to authorize an increase in troops and police serving in the UN peacekeeping force in the CAR, known as MINUSCA, to enable the mission to “deliver on its critical protection mandate.” UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix last week said he was considering sending a request to the UN Security Council for more troops for MINUSCA.

In 2013, the country fell into chaos when then President Francois Bozize was ousted by the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel alliance. The ouster caused a series of deadly reprisal attacks between the Seleka rebels and the Christian militia known as anti-Balaka.

The United Nations has 12,350 troops and police on the ground to help protect civilians and support the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadera, whose election last year helped significantly contain the inter-communal violence.

In recent months, the country has, however, witnessed a fresh wave of fighting between the armed groups. In May, some 300 people were killed and 100,000 displaced in the CAR in the worst flare-up since Touadera’s election. Locals say MINUSCA forces have failed to help stop the violence and provide security in the conflict-torn country.

Nine MINUSCA peacekeepers have been killed in the CAR since the beginning of this year, raising alarm that the country is sliding back into chaos. “The risk of a relapse into another large-scale humanitarian crisis is imminent,” said O’Brien.

Source: Presstv

Minister Dion Ngute was forced to flee from the building hosting the Cameroon embassy in South Africa during a town hall forum decreed by President Biya. Dion Ngute who was representing the 84 year old French Cameroun dictator had traveled to the Republic of South Africa to explained the so-called actions taken by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime towards resolving the Southern Cameroons crisis.

The Francophone regime’s action was interpreted by many Southern Cameroonians in South Africa as a pretentious and mocking endeavor to tilt the situation back home and instead engage in a diplomatic mission to convince Cameroonians in the Diaspora to support the ruling CPDM crime syndicate. Dion Ngute who moonlights as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in charge of the Commonwealth and his CPDM gang had a handful of people and other invited individuals in the hall.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands protesting Southern Cameroonians who came massively in their numbers were prevented from entering into the embassy. However, some forced their way into the embassy after bringing down the embassy gate, chanting songs of freedom and marched into the hall where the meeting was scheduled to take place.

(Southern Cameroons interim leader)

The junior Anglophone cabinet minister who hails from the oil rich Ndian constituency in West Cameroon, Bakassi Peninsula included was told to go back home, seek dialogue, free Southern Cameroons political prisoners and ensure school resumption in Southern Cameroons.

A sister publication Cameroon Info.Net reported that there was total chaos in the hall as the food, drinks and other entertainment items that were reserved for the Cameroonian delegation and their guests were completely destroyed by the angry crowd.

A frustrated Dion Ngute, attempted to engage the protesters in a conversation but was almost lynched. The humiliation suffered by the French Cameroun delegation was complete and total. He reportedly escaped unable to resist the mounting anger and pressure from Southern Cameroonians.

Culled from Cameroon Intelligence Report

Rwanda’s incumbent leader Paul Kagame has sealed a crushing victory in presidential elections that granted him a third term in office, extending his 17 years in power. Kagame has won international plaudits for presiding over a peaceful and rapid economic recovery in the Central African nation since the 1994 genocide, when an estimated 800,000 people Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.

But he has also faced mounting censure for what critics and rights groups say are widespread human rights abuses, a muzzling of independent media and suppression of political opposition. With 80 percent of votes accounted for, the 59-year-old former guerrilla leader secured 98.66 percent, the National Electoral Commission’s Executive secretary Charles Munyaneza told a news conference.

“We expect that even if we get 100 percent of votes, there will not be any change,” he said. The board expected turnout to top 90 percent in the East African country of 12 million citizens once full details emerged, in elections that fielded only a single opposition candidate, Frank Habineza, and an independent.
Kagame, who cast his vote in Kigali’s Rugunga polling station on Friday, said he would work to sustain economic growth in the tiny nation.

“This is another seven years to take care of issues that affect Rwandans and ensure that we become real Rwandans who are (economically) developing,” he said in a speech broadcast live on television. He won the last election in 2010 with 93 percent of the vote and during this campaign for a further seven-year term, said he expected an outright victory.

(Source: Reuters)

Cameroon has denied reports of the killing of 97 Nigerian fishermen by its gendarmes in Bakassi peninsula and maltreating Nigerian refugees in that country. A three-man delegation dispatched by Cameroonian President Paul Biya stated this in Abuja on Thursday at a joint briefing at the end of a meeting with the Foreign Affairs Minister Geoffrey Onyeama. The leader of the delegation, Cameroonian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Joseph Dion Ngute, said the delegation was in Nigeria to discuss issues of mutual benefits to both countries.

Ngute said there was no iota of truth in all the reports, saying Cameroon is a law abiding country and no such thing would ever happen. On the reported killing of over 97 Nigerians, the minister said nobody was killed, noting that it was a fabrication which appeared in the media, which nobody knew its purpose.

“We are here to inform the government of Nigeria that a month ago, we had reports in the media concerning massacre of people in the Bakassi area. “We sent our administrators and we asked Nigerian Counsel in Buea to accompany them. They went there and realized that not a single person was touched and nobody was injured or killed,” he said.
The minister said that the team came to discuss the situation that afflicted North Western part of Cameroon and North-Eastern part of Nigeria concerning the fight against Boko Haram. Ngute said that the two countries had been working perfectly in trying to clip the Boko Haram terrorists group and make sure that the evil group was completely alienated.

He also denied the report that his country maltreated Nigerian refugees, saying that they had protested to UN human right commission on the issue. “You know being a refugee is a very difficult condition. We in Cameroon are very sensitive to the issue. “If you visit our camp where we have about 60,000 refugees, they are being given the most humane treatment that we in Cameroon can give and can afford along with the UNHCR.

“We were a bit surprised by that report and we take exception to it. We drew the attention of the UNHCR that in Cameroon we have been abiding by the law,” he said. Ngute also briefed Nigeria on other issues of interest, especially the Southern Cameroons revolution and the stance of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium including resolving the industrial action by the Anglophone teachers and lawyers trade unions in the area.

Onyeama in his remarks said there was no distrust between the two countries. “On the contrary both countries are extremely close, working together very closely and I think sending this delegation by the president himself shows the importance he attaches to that relationship.

“We are also keen that this should trickle down to average Nigerian and Cameroonian. And I think by and large, it does. “However, we also have to be careful of social media where you can have a very small minority of people generating a narrative that is not in any way reflective of the reality,” he said.

Onyeama noted with pleasure the recent cooperation between both countries in the fight to reclaim territories under Boko Haram in the North East. He said that Cameroon had been fighting shoulder to shoulder with Nigerian soldiers against Boko Haram. The minister said that Cameroonian intervention in the fight had been very important and decisive.

Source: Vanguard

At least 34 people died when a bus carrying young Christian worshippers plunged down a steep ravine in central Madagascar, police and hospital officials said Tuesday.

Police said 12 badly burned bodies were counted at the site, 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of the capital Antananarivo. Hospitals said that 22 other deaths had been confirmed after the late-night crash.

“The bus struggled to climb a road on a hill and fell down a ravine about 20 meters deep,” police spokesman Herilalatiana Andrianarisaona told AFP. “It caught fire after rolling several times.”

The main hospital in the capital Antananarivo said it had accounted for 18 dead, while a hospital in the town of Ankazobe bear the crash scene reported four dead. Passengers on the packed bus were travelling from the central town of Soavinandriana to a church meeting in the north-western coastal port city of Mahajanga when the accident occurred.

(Source: AFP)

The African Union Peace and Security Council has urged Cameroon to ensure the repatriation of Nigerian refugees fleeing Boko Haram is done on a voluntary basis. Hundreds of refugees, most of them children, complain they are thirsty and hungry as they leave Cameroon on their way back to Nigeria.

They are escorted by troops from the multinational joint task force fighting the Boko Haram insurgency. Cameroon Red Cross official Joseph Guisso is among the humanitarian staff accompanying the refugees. He said the military escort is necessary because Boko Haram fighters can surprise them at any moment.

He said they have confidence in the task force and strongly believe the killings will end soon. The soldiers told VOA Boko Haram has been organizing sporadic attacks on a small scale since January. During the past two years, the regional force has retaken much of the territory Boko Haram once controlled.

The number of Nigerian refugees repatriated from Cameroon has not been made public. In March, the governments of the two countries signed a tripartite agreement with UNHCR that stipulated the repatriations must be voluntary.

In June, the U.N. refugee agency condemned what it called the Cameroonian government’s forced repatriation of 887 Nigerian refugees to the border town of Banki. The United Nations said there had been other similar incidents. Cameroon’s government has denied allegations of forced returns.

Cameroon has struggled to meet the humanitarian needs of the approximately 115,000 Nigerian refugees within its borders, as well as an estimated 200,000 Cameroonians displaced by the conflict.

Suicide attacks have picked up recently in border areas in Cameroon, with at least 30 attacks reported in June, including some targeting refugee camps. Far North region of Cameroon Governor Midjiyawa Bakari has argued it would be better for refugees to go to safer localities in their own country.

A delegation from the African Union visited the northern town of Maroua on Friday. The chairman of the African Union Peace and Security Council, Nigerian-born Ambassador Bankole Adeoye, led the delegation. He told VOA only refugees who choose to go back should be repatriated.

“We want to thank the government and people of Cameroon first for hosting these refugees and coordinating all the necessary sectors. With the United Nations agencies, we are suggesting and proposing that all the refugees should return in safety and in dignity,” said Adeoye.

Aid agencies have also expressed concern about the conditions to which refugees are returning. UNHCR and Doctors without Borders have warned food, water and other resources are dangerously overstretched in border communities in Nigeria.

Source:VOANews

Anti-corruption campaign group Global Witness says 20% of mining revenue in the Democratic Republic of Congo, $750m (£576m) over the last three years, has failed to reach the country’s treasury.

“For years revenues have leaked from Congo’s mining sector into offshore shell companies. Now we can see that even revenues paid to government bodies in Congo are going missing before they reach the treasury,” says Global Witness Senior Campaigner Pete Jones.

Global Witness says this the money is going missing due to corruption and mismanagement.

The government has previously denied allegations of corruption in its mining sector.

Despite being Africa’s top copper producer and the world’s largest supplier of cobalt, DR Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world.

Source: BBC