Month: November 2020

Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara has met his main political rival for talks on ending election-related violence that fuelled fears the country could plunge into civil conflict.
The meeting on Wednesday, less than two weeks after Ouattara’s disputed re-election, come as the government updated the death toll from the recent unrest to 85.

Ouattara, 78, and Henri Konan Bedie, an 86-year-old former president, arrived at an upmarket hotel in the commercial hub of Abidjan several hours after the much-awaited meeting was announced by the government.
Their talks are the first since presidential elections on October 31 resulted in a bitter standoff, raising concerns of protracted instability in Francophone West Africa’s biggest economy and the world’s top cocoa producer.
Ouattara was declared victor with more than 94 percent of the vote, which was boycotted by the main opposition. The president’s opponents say he breached the country’s two-term presidential limits, but Ouattara says constitutional amendments introduced in 2016 effectively reset the countdown clock on the two-term limit and allow him to run again.
The opposition has refused to acknowledge the results of the election, launched what it calls a campaign of civil disobedience and pledged to set up a transitional government to replace Ouattara.
Several opposition leaders, including former Prime Minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan, the opposition’s spokesman, have been arrested, and the homes of others are being blockaded by security forces.
Deadly violence, often tinged by ethnic rivalry, erupted in August after Ouattara formally announced his controversial bid for a third term in office.
Communications Minister Sidi Tiemoko Toure told reporters that the official toll now stood at 85 dead and 484 injured, many of them in the southeast of the country.
Of the fatalities, 34 occurred before the election, 20 on voting day and 31 afterwards. Toure added that 225 people had been arrested, of whom 45 were in custody and 167 had been charged.
For many Ivorians, painful memories have stirred of the aftermath of disputed elections in 2010. A political standoff was followed by a brief civil war in which around 3,000 people died and an estimated 1.3 million people fled their homes.

The face-to-face between Ouattara and Bedie follows increasing calls from the United Nations (UN), the European Union, former colonial power France and Ivory Coast’s neighbours for efforts to ease the tension.
More than 8,000 people have streamed out of the country to seek refuge in neighbouring states, especially Liberia, the UN’s refugee agency said on Tuesday. More than half of them are children, many of whom have arrived unaccompanied or separated from their parents.
Ouattara, in a speech on Monday, proposed a meeting with Bedie, whom he respectfully described as his elder.
In its response, Bedie’s Democratic Party of Ivory Coast on Wednesday set down several conditions for such talks, including the lifting of the home blockades and the end of judicial procedures against arrested leaders.
The blockade around Bedie’s home had been lifted as of the early afternoon on Wednesday. However, fellow opposition leader Assoa Adou reported that a blockade was still in place around his home.
Ouattara and Bedie have been central figures in Ivorian politics for decades, with each claiming the mantel of the late Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the highly popular first post-independence president. Africanewsguru update.

Report has it that the United Nations has called on Mozambique to investigate reports that an armed group murdered villagers and beheaded women and children in a violence-wracked northern region.

As many as 50 people have died in recent days in attacks by fighters linked to ISIL (ISIS), local media reported.
Violence has surged this year in Cabo Delgado a province that borders Tanzania and is the site of a multibillion-dollar natural gas project alarming governments across southern Africa.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an investigation in a statement late on Tuesday.

The secretary-general is shocked over recent reports of massacres by non-state armed groups in several villages including the reported beheading and kidnapping of women and children, his spokesman said.
Security forces in Cabo Delgado have been fighting the armed group which pledged allegiance to ISIL last year since 2017.
Little is known about the fighters who call themselves al-Shabab although they have no known links to the group of that name operating in Somalia.
The unrest has killed more than 2,000 people since 2017 more than half of them civilians, according to the US-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
The violent attacks in Cabo Delgado have triggered a humanitarian crisis with more than 300,000 internally displaced people and 712,000 in need of humanitarian assistance, according to an Amnesty International report released last month.
In September, Amnesty International accused Mozambican soldiers of committing atrocities during a crackdown on violence, but the defence ministry dismissed the reports, saying fighters regularly impersonated soldiers. Africanewsguru update.

More clashes broke out over Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara’s re-election as West African nations and France called for dialogue to end tensions over his contested third term.
Ouattara secured the October 31 election by more than 94 percent but Ivory Coast is mired in a dispute after opposition leaders rejected the vote, accusing him of breaching the two-term limit for the presidency.

Tensions have revived trauma over disputed elections in 2010 that unleashed a brief civil war in the West African country, claiming about 3,000 lives.
At least three people were killed in the central-eastern town of M’Batto between Monday and Tuesday when violence erupted between rival ethnic communities over Ouattara’s third term, police and residents said.
The situation is calm now and reinforcements are patrolling the area, a police spokesman said, confirming the total of three killed and 26 wounded.
Another nine people died in violence in two other towns on Monday as the country’s top court validated Ouattara’s election victory.
More than 8,000 Ivorians have fled to neighbouring countries fearing election-linked violence, the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday, adding more than 60 percent of whom are children.
West African bloc Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) offered warm congratulations to Ouattara but the 15-member group urged him to bring Ivorians together after the unrest that has killed about 50 people since August.
Ouattara, a former International Monetary Fund economist first elected in 2010, has urged chief rival Henri Konan Bedie to drop the protests and hold talks to defuse the crisis.

I will be the president for all Ivorians, he qsaid in a national broadcast on Monday. There has been no official response from the main opposition party Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI) or its chief Bedie, an 86-year-old former president.
Bedie’s Abidjan home is still blockaded by security forces. Two other opposition chiefs have been arrested for suspected insurrection after rejecting the ballot and announcing a rival government. But one opposition representative maintained a hard line.
We do not recognise the election. We all know he [Ouattara] violated the constitution, said N’Goran Djiedri, leader of one faction of the PDCI. Yes to dialogue but the rule of law must be respected.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Ivory Coast’s former colonial ruler considered Ouattara’s offer of dialogue went in the right direction but hoped acts will contribute to appeasement.
“Bedie and Ouattara could see each other and be seen with each other to take the tensions down a level, one Western diplomat said. The real discussion needs to happen between these two.
The bitter rivalry has marked Ivorian politics for decades along with ethnic and regional loyalties.
In power since 2010, Ouattara had said at the end of his second term he would make way for the next generation, raising hopes for an end to the long-running feuds. But the sudden death of his chosen successor in July prompted a change of mind.
His bid angered opposition chiefs, stoking tensions over a possible post-election crisis similar to one in 2010-11 when then-president Laurent Gbagbo refused to accept defeat by Ouattara. French troops eventually intervened and Ouattara loyalists were able to dislodge Gbagbo.
The country was already divided in two after a civil war – the north held by rebels and the south by Gbagbo’s forces. Africanewsguru update.

Thousands of Ethiopians fleeing conflict in the northern Tigray region have crossed west into neighbouring Sudan, a Sudanese government official said.
Among those streaming across the border were several Ethiopian soldiers, Alsir Khaled, head of Sudan’s refugee agency in the eastern border town of Kassala, said on Tuesday.

Refugees are pouring in, and the situation is changing by the hour, said Khaled.
At least 2,500 refugees were counted in the past two days, but hundreds more civilians arriving were yet to be processed by authorities, he added.
Around 30 Ethiopian soldiers who also fled handed themselves over at a Sudanese military checkpoint, Khaled added.
Local authorities said they have started to prepare a refugee camp for the fleeing Ethiopians, while aid groups warned of a brewing humanitarian crisis in the heart of the Horn of Africa.
Sudan has sent more than 6,000 troops to the border.
Meanwhile Ethiopia’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Tuesday again vowed that his military will bring a speedy end to the week-long fighting in Tigray and remove its Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) leadership, which his government regards as illegal.

Abiy described his government’s military campaign in the Tigray region as law enforcement operations that he said will end as soon as the criminal junta is disarmed, legitimate administration in the region restored, and fugitives apprehended and brought to justice all of them rapidly coming within reach”.
Abiy has shown no sign of initiating talks with the TPLF, which once dominated Ethiopia’s ruling coalition.
Feeling marginalised by Abiy’s political reforms, the party broke away from the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) – which ruled the country for decades last year as the prime minister transformed the coalition into a single Prosperity Party.
The TPLF then defied the federal government by holding a local election in September, after Addis Ababa postponed all elections due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Diplomats and other observers assert that the conflict in Tigray could destabilise the region and other parts of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country of 110 million people.
Ethiopia has many ethnic groups and regions that have sought more autonomy even as Abiy, who won the Nobel prize just last year, tries to hold the country together with exhortations of national unity.

Several hundred people have been reportedly killed on both the sides in the Tigray conflict, a diplomat in the capital, Addis Ababa, told The Associated Press.
More than 150 citizens of European Union countries alone are thought to be in the region, which is increasingly cut off with airports and roads closed and communications largely severed.
Those governments are trying to ensure their consular protection, the diplomat added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
There are so many uncertainties, the diplomat said. How far can Abiy go with this operation while keeping the possibility of, in the end, having a more or less peaceful solution? You need the support of the people.
Experts worry that the longer the conflict lasts, the more difficult it will be for the federal government to bring the Tigray region back to Ethiopia’s federation of states. Africanewsguru update.

Mali’s former President Amadou Toumani Toure, who led the Sahel nation for a decade before being removed in a coup, has died in Turkey aged 72, a family member and a doctor said.

Amadou Toumani Toure died during the night of Monday to Tuesday in Turkey, where he had been taken for health reasons, his nephew Oumar Toure gave the report on Tuesday.
His chief of staff, Seydou Cissouma, also gave reports of his confirmed death on Monday night in Turkey but provided no further details.

A hospital doctor in Bamako said the former leader, who won acclaim for pursuing democratic reforms before being toppled by a military coup in 2012, had recently undergone heart surgery.
Although everything seemed to be going well, the doctor said he was later transferred to Turkey for medical reasons.
Toure, a former army general widely known by his initials ATT, first took charge of the country for a year in 1991 after military ruler Moussa Traore’s security forces killed more than 100 pro-democracy demonstrators.
He organised democratic elections the following year and handed over power to a civilian president, earning him the nickname of Soldier of Democracy.
He won presidential elections in 2002 and 2007 but was overthrown in 2012 by mutinous soldiers who accused him of failing to support their battle against both Tuareg rebels and other rebels.

Toure’s life, in many ways, symbolised the stop-start nature of democracy in the West African country, where his successor, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was overthrown in another coup this August. Africanewsguru update.

Ivory Coast’s Constitutional Council has formally ratified President Alassane Ouattara’s re-election to a third term after a tense election that was marred by clashes and an opposition boycott.
Alassane Ouattara is proclaimed elected in the first round, Council President Mamadou Kone said on Monday in a national broadcast.

Kone added that no serious irregularities were noted during the October 31 presidential election, confirming the results that gave the 78-year-old more than 94 percent votes.
Opposition leaders had called on supporters to boycott the electoral process, saying Ouattara’s bid for a third term was unconstitutional. While Ivory Coast has a limit of two presidential terms, Ouattara insists a new constitution in 2016 allows him to run again.
On Saturday, opposition leader and former Prime Minister Pascal Affi N’Guessan was placed under arrest for creating a rival transitional government. Other adversaries to the current president are under investigation for insurrection, with prosecutors pursuing terrorism charges against more than a dozen of those who called for an election boycott.

In early March, Ouattara said he would not seek another mandate, seemingly ending months of speculation that he would try to extend his stay beyond the two-term mandates.
However, Ouattara revised his position five months later following the sudden death of his handpicked successor, Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly.
Nearly 50 people have been killed in clashes since Ouattara first announced he would run for the third term in August, fuelling fears Ivory Coast could slide into the kind of widespread unrest it suffered after a disputed 2010 vote.
New clashes between rival ethnic communities broke out on Monday in central eastern Daoukro, a stronghold of opposition leader Henri Konan Bedie, officials said. Deadly violence also erupted there in the lead up to the election.
Inter-community clashes in Daoukro left three dead and 41 wounded on Monday, local government administrator Solange Aka reported.
She said one person had been decapitated and another burned as protesters barricaded roads.
The death toll was confirmed by the president of the regional council Adam Kolia Traore.
Much of the violence over the election involved clashes between local ethnic groups allied with the opposition and Dioula communities seen as close to Ouattara, himself a Muslim from the north.
Opposition protesters and police clashed earlier on Monday in Abidjan’s Yopougon district, where a minibus was set ablaze, in which disturbances also broke out in the capital, Yamoussoukro, and in the opposition strongholds of Bouadikro and Bongouanou, residents said.
The high tensions surrounding the vote raised concerns about the continued stability of the world’s top cocoa producer, a country still recovering from months of post-election violence in 2010 and 2011 that killed some 3,000 people.
The United Nations said on Monday that some 3,600 Ivorians have fled to neighbouring Liberia. Hundreds more headed to neighbouring Togo and Ghana. Africanewsguru update.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has sacked his army chief, head of intelligence and foreign minister, as the military continues a five-day operation in the northern Tigray region with a new round of air raids.
Abiy’s office made the announcement on its Twitter feed on Sunday, giving no reasons for the changes, as the reported number of soldiers wounded in the conflict continued to rise.

It said Deputy Prime Minister Demeke Mekonnen had been appointed foreign minister and Birhanu Jula was promoted to army chief of staff, from deputy army chief.
Abiy also named Temesgen Tiruneh, who was president of the Amhara region, as the new intelligence chief.
The prime minister is pursuing a military campaign he announced in the early hours of Wednesday, despite international pleas for dialogue with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in order to avoid civil war.
In a report on Saturday, the United Nations said nine million people were at risk of displacement from the escalating conflict, warning that the government’s declaration on Wednesday of a state of emergency in Tigray was blocking food and other aid.

Tigrayans dominated Ethiopian politics for decades until Abiy took office in 2018. They are fighting his efforts to reduce their influence.
Meanwhile, a medical official reported that 98 government soldiers had been treated for gunshot wounds at a hospital in the neighbouring Amhara region, the latest indication that fighting has been intense.
Abiy and military leaders have touted Ethiopian soldiers’ successes against forces loyal to the TPLF, but a communications blackout in the region has made their accounts difficult to verify.
An Ethiopian military plane bombed a missile and artillery site next to the airport in the Tigray region’s capital Mekelle on Sunday, one military and two diplomatic sources reported, which noted that it was not immediately clear what was destroyed in the bombing. The sources said the plane left a military base in the city of Bahir Dar in Amhara.
New army chief Birhanu told a state-run newspaper on Sunday that the army was in control of several towns near the border with Eritrea, including Dansha and Shire, but he did not say when the army had seized those areas.
It was impossible to verify the report because of the communications blackout in the region. Reports of dead and wounded soldiers have mounted in recent days in Amhara, where a humanitarian aid worker said three died and 35 were treated on Saturday and on Friday, 105 were reported injured and five killed in the region.

Abiy spoke on Saturday with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who offered his good offices.
According to the UN spokesman, Guterres also spoke with African Union chief Moussa Faki Mahamat and Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in his capacity as chair of the regional Africa group IGAD.
Experts have voiced concerns the conflict could not only break Ethiopia apart but also reverberate across the region and draw in outside forces.
This could be the start of a civil war, but that is not certain, said Martin Plaut, a longtime observer of politics in the Horn of Africa. The situation in Tigray is one of many crises in the country, but could intensify, drawing in other Ethiopian regions, while also threatening neighbouring Sudan and Eritrea. Africanewsguru update.

Seventeen bodies have been unearthed in newly found mass graves in western Libya’s Tarhuna region, taking the total exhumed in recent months to 112, the missing persons authority said.
Lotfi Tawfiq, who heads a committee tasked by the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) to search for missing people, said on Saturday that five new mass graves containing 17 bodies had been discovered since Thursday.

The graves are located in Tarhuna, from where eastern-based military commander Khalifa Haftar’s forces launched an aborted assault last year on the capital Tripoli, seat of the GNA.
The area, some 80 kilometres (50 miles) southeast of Tripoli, served as the main staging point for Haftar’s failed offensive.
The presence of mass graves in Tarhuna was first reported after the withdrawal of Haftar’s forces from western Libya in June.
Libya’s GNA Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha said the graves represented “atrocious acts” that cannot go unpunished.

Bashagha said one of the bodies exhumed was Mabrouk Khalaf, a general and former director of information.
The graves found this week are the latest in a string of grim discoveries in Tarhuna, and excavations continue.
A major oil producer, Libya has been wracked by violence since a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 overthrew and killed veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Since then, the North African country has been dominated by armed groups, riven by local conflicts and divided between two bitterly opposed administrations: The GNA in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east affiliated with Haftar.
The two warring sides signed a permanent ceasefire last month after UN-sponsored talks in Geneva.
After the deal, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it welcomed the move towards peace, but warned that the agreement failed to provide “a clear commitment and a pathway to accountability for the serious crimes and other abuses perpetuated”.
Failure to see justice done will only hamper aspirations for a durable peace, warned the rights group’s senior Libya researcher, Hanan Salah, at the time. Africanewsguru update.