The spokesman of the Gabonese presidency, Ike Ngouoni, has been detained in the capital Libreville in what is believed to be an anti-corruption investigation, his lawyers told the AFP news agency on Monday.

Mr. Ngouoni, along with over a dozen others have been detained since last Thursday “without any reason,” said lawyer, Anges Kévin Nzigou.

The lawyer further disclosed that his clients were all questioned about the financing of the “republican tour” led a few months ago by Brice Laccruche Alihanga, then cabinet director of the presidency.

The wave of arrests in progress is neither a witch hunt nor a settling of accounts. The fight against impunity has no agenda or timetable, it is permanent.

Despite his efforts, it was in early November that he was sacked from the presidency. He was subsequently appointed to the post of minister in charge of the follow-up of the “Strategy of the human investments and the objectives of sustainable development”.

Another lawyer for the detained presidential spokesperson, Boris Rosenthal, insists that “there is a political vendetta” in the current process, a claim the Prime Minister refutes.

“The wave of arrests in progress is neither a witch hunt nor a settling of accounts,” said Gabonese Prime Minister Julien Nkoghe Bekale on Monday on Twitter. “The fight against impunity has no agenda or timetable, it is permanent.”

The Central Africa oil producer has in the past few months been rocked by a timber scandal that also led to the firing of top government officials including the vice president.

Source: Africa News

Residents in DR Congo’s volatile city of Beni set fire to the local town hall and accused US peacekeepers of inaction after eight civilians were killed overnight in a militant attack, an AFP reporter said.

Army spokesman Colonel Mak Hazukai confirmed the latest casualties in the city, near the Ugandan border, telling AFP that “the enemy entered the Boikene quarter and killed eight civilians.”

Incensed locals then partly burnt the town hall and then moved towards the camp of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) on the outskirts of Beni, accusing it of inaction.   

There have been a string of rallies against local forces and UN peacekeepers in Beni for failing to stop attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) militia.

Nearly 70 civilians have been massacred in the Beni region since military action against the ADF began at the start of November.

A protester died in police firing on Saturday. Two policemen were killed the same day by angry demonstrators, the UN Okapi radio said.

The ADF began as an Islamist rebellion hostile to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. They fell back into eastern DRC in 1995 and have recruited people of different nationalities, but appear to have halted raids inside Uganda.

MONUSCO on Saturday said the Congolese army had launched the offensive unilaterally.

“MONUSCO cannot engage in operations in a war zone without being asked and without strict coordination with the national army,” it said in a tweet, adding that uncoordinated action could lead to friendly fire.

(AFP)

Seven crew aboard a supply ship for the oil industry in Equatorial Guinea were kidnapped when “pirates” attacked their vessel, the oil and gas ministry said in a statement.The 15-member crew comprised nationals from South Africa, the Philippines, Serbia, and Cameroon.

The US oil giant ExxonMobil reported the supply ship Warden, which it was chartering from the oil services firm Swire, was attacked on Wednesday in the country’s territorial waters, it said.“Eight hid and seven were kidnapped,” the statement said.

The vessel had left the oilfield of Zafiro, 12 nautical miles off the coast, and was heading to Luba, a port town on the southern island of Bioko, when it was attacked.The statement gave no details about the kidnappers or their motives.Equatorial Guinea is located on the southern rim of the Gulf of Guinea, one of the world’s hotspots for maritime piracy.In the first nine months of this year, the region accounted for 82 percent of crew kidnappings around the world, according to the International Maritime Bureau, an organization monitoring crimes at sea.

In 2018, attacks doubled over the previous year.Pirates in the Gulf of Guinea sometimes divert ships for several days, long enough to plunder the cargo and demand huge ransoms before freeing the crew.On Nov. 4, four sailors were kidnapped and a guard was shot and wounded when suspected pirates stormed an oil tanker off the coast of Togo.

Two days earlier, pirates attacked a Norwegian-owned ship waiting to berth at the port of Cotonou in Benin, taking eight crew and the captain.In August, Russian, Chinese and Ukrainian seamen were seized in attacks on merchant ships off Cameroon’s port of Douala.

The countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea, an arc that stretches some 6,000 kilometers from Angola to Liberia in the north, have limited surveillance and maritime defense capabilities.They have been trying for several years to bolster their means of intervention and improve regional collaboration with US and French help. 

Source: AFP

Heavy rains lashing East Africa have caused dozens of deaths, with 29 buried by landslides in Kenya, and 10 people drowned in a river in Tanzania, officials said Saturday.

The landslides and floods come amid weeks of destructive rains and flooding across the wider East African region.

At least 29 people were killed in Kenya when their homes were swept away in landslides during ferocious overnight rainstorms.

Their homes were hit in the early hours of Saturday amid torrential rains in the Pokot region, 350 kilometers northwest of the capital, Nairobi.

“We are saddened to confirm that 12 people from Tapach and Parua in Pokot South, and 17 from Tamkal in Pokot Central lost their lives,” Kenya’s Interior Minister Fred Matiang’i said in a statement.

“Our profound sympathies go to the families and friends of those who have been affected.”

Army and police helicopters have been sent, Matiang’i said, with efforts delayed because roads had been cut and bridges closed after streams turned into raging torrents.

Two children were pulled out alive from the smashed wreckage of their mud-covered homes, and rescue efforts to dig bodies out of the dirt continued.

“Massive landslides reported in various areas of West Pokot County following heavy downpour,” Kenya Red Cross said in a message, adding its emergency response teams had deployed to help.

Extreme weather

In Tanzania, at least 10 people drowned when they were swept away by a torrential river in the far west, in the Sengerema district of Mwanza.

“We think there is a possibility to find more bodies,” said Tanzanian Red Cross official Revocatus Kayanda, part of the team who recovered the victims.

Violent downpours have also displaced tens of thousands in Somalia, submerged whole towns in South Sudan, and killed dozens in flash floods and landslides in Ethiopia.

Close to a million people in South Sudan alone are affected with growing fears of disease and starvation.

Floods hit East Africa regularly, but scientists say that it has been exacerbated by a powerful climate phenomenon in the Indian Ocean, stronger than any seen in years.

The extreme weather is blamed on the Indian Ocean Dipole — a climate system defined by the difference in sea surface temperature between the western and eastern areas of the ocean.

The ocean off East Africa is currently far warmer than usual, resulting in higher evaporation and consequent rain over the continent.

(Source: AFP)