NEWS - The African Mirror

Mar

04

2021

Senegal opposition leader arrested as supporters clash with police

NEWS

COOPER INVEEN and NGOUNDA DIONE Ousmane Sonko. Picture: Senflash/flickr SENEGAL’S main opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, was arrested yesterday after hundreds of his supporters clashed with police in the capital while protesting a rape accusation against him. An employee at a beauty salon accused Sonko, who finished third in the 2019 presidential election, of rape last month and he was summoned for questioning after his parliamentary immunity was removed last week. Sonko, a 46-year-old former tax inspector who enjoys significant support among younger Senegalese, has denied the allegation and accuses President Macky Sall's government of stirring up the charge to undermine…

Mar

04

2021

By The African Mirror

U.S. presses Ethiopia to end Tigray violence

NEWS

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has pressed Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to end hostilities in the northern Tigray region, citing a "growing number of credible reports of atrocities and human rights violations and abuses." In a statement, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Blinken pressed Abiy in a phone call to withdraw outside forces from Tigray, including troops from Ethiopia's Amhara region and from Eritrea, and for an immediate end to violence. The United Nations Security Council is likely to discuss the situation in Tigray in a closed-door meeting later this week, diplomats said. The United States is…

Mar

04

2021

By The African Mirror

Ambulance hits landmine: 6 killed

NEWS

A pregnant woman and five other people died when an ambulance carrying them hit a land mine in northern Burkina Faso, in an area that has come under repeated militant attacks, the government said. The ambulance was carrying the woman, her husband, a girl and two other women between the towns of Gaskindé and Namissiguia, near Burkina Faso's border with Mali on Tuesday, the government said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for laying the land mine. Attacks in Burkina Faso by fighters linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic State have risen sharply over the last three years, displacing more than…

Mar

04

2021

By The African Mirror

Morocco sees Sahel jihadists as magnet for local cells

NEWS

JIHADIST groups in the nearby Sahel region, which recruit and train their followers online, represent Morocco's biggest militant threat, the head of its counterterrorism agency said. Although Morocco has had only one major attack over the past decade - the 2018 killing of two Scandinavian tourists - its location "makes it a target for the Sahel groups" said Haboub Cherkaoui. "The terrorist threat persists as long as there are groups that recruit and train their followers online including Islamic State in the greater Sahara," he told Reuters in an interview. Since it was set up in 2015, Cherkaoui's Central Bureau…

Mar

24

2021

By The African Mirror

Ethiopia PM concedes to Tigray atrocities

NEWS

ETHIOPIA’S Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has for the first time yesterday conceded that atrocities such as rape took place in Tigray, during the war. In a parliamentary address, Ahmed promised that the perpetrators would be punished. He also disclosed that troops from neighbouring Eritrea entered the northern Tigray region during the five-month-old conflict, the first such acknowledgement after months of denials. Fighting erupted in Tigray after forces loyal to the then-governing party there - the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) - attacked army bases across the region overnight and in the early hours of November 4. The attacks initially overwhelmed…

Mar

24

2021

By The African Mirror

American held in Uganda for “subversive activities”

NEWS

UGANDA has detained an American national for involvement in subversive activities, amid a deadly crackdown against opponents of longtime President Yoweri Museveni that has drawn growing international censure. In a brief statement on its Facebook account, Uganda Police said it had arrested the American, Guy Smith, in a town in the country's west on Sunday. He was detained "for his alleged involvement in anti government subversive activities. He remains in custody at...as inquiries continue. Any new information will be communicated accordingly," the statement said. Police gave no further details. In an email, a U.S. State Department official said the government…

Mar

24

2021

By The African Mirror

DRC on the brink of being Ebola free

NEWS

FISTON MAHAMBA The Democratic Republic of Congo released its last confirmed Ebola patients from treatment centers on Monday, health authorities said, beginning a 42-day countdown to declaring the country free of the virus. Monday's release of six patients from treatment centers in the North Kivu region could mark the end of a month-long resurgence of the 2018-20 epidemic, which killed more than 2,200 people before it was initially declared over in June 2020. Twelve cases have been reported since the virus re-emerged at the beginning of February, killing six people. It's been three weeks since North Kivu health authorities have…

Mar

24

2021

By The African Mirror

Angolan tycoon’s gets his $900 million fortune

NEWS

NOAH BROWNING SWITZERLAND’S top court has ruled against a freeze on $900 million belonging to a jailed Angolan businessman, citing insufficient evidence for money laundering alleged by prosecutors. The ruling reverses part of one of the largest personal asset freezes in Swiss history, levied by prosecutors in 2018 and upheld by a court last year, though the precise amount due to be potentially unfrozen was not specified. Carlos Manuel de Sao Vicente was a key figure in Angola's oil industry, heading a group of companies called AAA International which sold insurance contracts to state oil company Sonangol over nearly two…

Mar

24

2021

By The African Mirror

Four arrested in Uganda for killing lions

NEWS

UGANDAN wildlife officials have detained four men suspected of killing and dismembering lions in one of the East African country's largest national parks, they announced yesterday. Six carcases, some with severed heads and legs, were discovered in the Ishasha sector of Queen Elizabeth National Park, near the border with Democratic Republic of Congo, on Friday. The lions are believed to have been poisoned. The Uganda Wildlife Authority said four men had been detained. "The suspects took the security team to a location where three heads of lions were found hidden in a tree and the fourth one was buried with…

Mar

24

2021

By The African Mirror

Niger mourns 137 victims

NEWS

FLAGS flew at half-staff and Koranic verses played on state media yesterday as Niger began observing three days of national mourning for the 137 victims of coordinated raids on villages in the southwest. The killings on Sunday represented Niger's worst civilian carnage in recent memory, surpassing an attack by suspected militants in January that killed at least 100 villagers and another last week that killed at least 58. The scale of the violence this year has called into question claims of progress in the fight against Islamist militants by governments in West Africa's Sahel region and former colonial power France,…