Month: October 2023

U.N. officials say eight peacekeepers have been suspended and detained in eastern Congo on allegations of sexual exploitation.

U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric on Thursday told reporters in New York that, “upon receiving information that contingent members from the U.N. peacekeeping force in the DRC deployed at a base in the eastern part of the country were fraternizing, after curfew hours, at an out of bounds bar known to be a place where transactional sex occurs, the U.N. Mission’s military police and conduct and discipline personnel visited the premises to assess the reports they had received.”

“After confirming their presence and attempting to detain the contingent members for breaching the U.N.’s standards of conduct and the Mission’s non-fraternization policy,” he said, “U.N. Mission personnel were physically assaulted and threatened by the contingent members.”

Dujarric added that, “there is also evidence indicating a serious failure in the exercise of command and control by senior military officials belonging to that same contingent.”

The peacekeepers have been confined pending further details and a full investigation.

A U.N. official, who was not authorized to speak about the specifics of the case, told The Associated Press the eight peacekeepers are from South Africa and that they were detained in the city of Beni in North Kivu province after being caught with prostitutes at an unauthorized bar after curfew.

Mali’s ruling junta have cancelled the authorization given to French flag carrier Air France to resume operations and services to the country.

Two senior Malian officials and an air transport official gave the update on Wednesday less than 24hours after news went round that Air France will resume service to Mali from Friday.

“The decision was cancelled because the agreement was given without consulting the hierarchy,” said one official. Air France had announced on Tuesday that it would resume service to Mali from Friday .. after a two-month suspension amid tensions in the Sahel and between Bamako and Paris.

The earlier announcement indicated the resumption of flights would be carried by a third-party aircraft and crew. Air France had said in its announcement that the flights sold by Air France will no longer be operated by the company’s own aircraft, but by “a Boeing 777-200 ER belonging to Portuguese carrier EuroAtlantic Airways”.

It added that the crew will also be made up of employees of this company which, in addition to scheduled flights, offers charter and leasing services.

The airline had suspended its flights to Mali and Burkina Faso on August 7, following the closure of airspace in neighboring Niger, the scene of a coup d’état on July 26.

The initial suspension was just for several days, but after the airline extended the suspension, citing Niger’s coup and the “geopolitical situation” in the Sahel region, Malian authorities revoked Air France’s permit.

Relations between Mali and France have soured since a junta seized control in the West African country in 2020.

Nigeria has repatriated 310 of its nationals who were in Jordan after leaving Israel by road, where they were on a Christian pilgrimage, the Lagos State government announced on Tuesday.

“I am happy to announce that we have managed to repatriate by plane all 310 citizens who had gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem,” Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo declared on X (ex-Twitter). -Olu.

These pilgrims were traveling from Bethlehem to Nazareth when they learned that an attack was underway in southern Israel, said Bukola Adeleke, special adviser for Christian affairs in that state and one of the leaders of the band.

“We were scared and everyone wanted to return to Nigeria, no one wants to die,” he told Africanewsguru.com after the group returned Tuesday morning.

The group – who were in Israel as part of a twice-yearly pilgrimage organized by the Lagos State government – and the Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission organized their road trip to Jordan, from where they took off for Lagos on a specially chartered plane.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is divided almost evenly between the predominantly Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south.

Israel announced on Tuesday that it had partially regained control of its border with the Gaza Strip, placed in a state of siege, after four days of a war against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which has already left more than 3,000 dead.

At least three civilians were killed on Monday in Sudan when shells fell on a hospital, a medical source said, as fighting between rival generals continued unabated.

“Shells fell on Al-Nau hospital in Omdourman, the northern suburb of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, the source told Africanewsguru.com.

Omdourman is the scene of violent fighting between the regular army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, who have been at war since 15 April.

Human rights groups have accused both sides of targeting health facilities.

In August, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned that Al-Nau hospital “is one of the last health facilities open in Omdourman”.

“It is also the only facility with an emergency trauma room or surgical capacity in northern Omdurman, where all the city’s wounded are brought”, said MSF.

According to the United Nations, more than 70% of the country’s hospitals are out of action.

They have been bombed or occupied by fighters, and the stocks of those that are still functioning have been exhausted or looted.

Although most of the fighting was confined to the capital and the western region of Darfur, it has spread to areas south of Khartoum, according to witnesses.

In the town of Jabal Awliya, 50 kilometres south of the capital, doctors “have had to stop all work at the hospital since yesterday evening because of heavy artillery shelling”, a doctor told our journalist “Dozens of wounded” remained in hospital, awaiting urgent treatment, he added.

To date, more than 9,000 people have been killed in the Sudanese conflict, according to an estimate by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), which is widely considered to be an underestimate. Monday’s bombings came a day after fighting resumed in El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan state, 350 kilometres south of Khartoum.

One child was killed and at least 16 others wounded in the fighting, while houses were destroyed, said a committee of pro-democracy lawyers who documented the massacres.

The UN estimates that nearly 5.5 million people have been displaced and made refugees by the fighting in Sudan.

Liberia’s presidential election on Tuesday sees 19 candidates vying to replace President George Weah, who is seeking a second term.

If it goes to a second round of voting, three stand out as possible rivals to Weah, a former international football star who in 2017 won more than 61 percent in the second round.  His election victory then sparked high hopes of change in one of the countries on the planet still reeling from civil war and disease.

Weah had spent the previous decade building political credibility, including three years in the Senate, to match his sporting icon status. Today, the 57-year-old is campaigning hard to convince Liberians he can still improve their lives.

– Joseph Boakai: out for revenge –

Losing candidate in the final round of voting in 2017, Joseph Boakai looks to be on his last bid for the presidency at the age of 78. He has served the state for four decades.

Vice president to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf from 2006 to 2018, Boakai can boast of his years of experience.

But the agriculture minister in the government of president Samuel Doe has been branded “Sleepy Joe” by opponents, who suggest it’s time to retire.

Boakai is from the indigenous population, like George Weah, and not the US-Liberian elite, who founded the free nation and were descended from slaves.

Boakai calls himself an ordinary, honest man from a modest background who had to work hard.

He says integrity has marked his long career which has included criticism of the Weah administration’s links to several corruption scandals.

He is running on a platform to improve infrastructure, invest in agriculture, attract investors, open up Liberia to tourists and restore the nation’s image.

Boakai has long been preparing for the election as the candidate for the Unity Party, one of the leading political groups in Liberia.

He has struck an alliance with former warlord and senator Prince Johnson, who had backed Weah in 2017, and retains strong support in his home province of Nimba in the north.

That has helped keep him among the favourites to reach the second round of voting.

– Alexander Cummings: businessman –

Alexander Cummings, 66, has presented himself as a good manager with skills and knowledge from a long career in business that his rivals do not have.

“I’ll vote Cummings. He’s the best candidate. He has the qualifications and connections. He will know how to create jobs,” electrician Augustine Koffer, 34, said at a rally in the capital Monrovia.

His work especially in the senior ranks of Coca Cola helped build a fortune that has enabled him to finance development projects at home.

In 2017, he came 5th, with just 7.2 percent of the vote.

But he can count on Charlyne Brumskine, his running mate this time around — the daughter of former political heavyweight Charles Brumskine, who garnered 9.6 percent last time and finished third.

Cummings enjoys major financial clout and a strong international image but could suffer from being seen as elitist and struggle to win popular support after a career essentially abroad.

– Tiawan Gongloe: human rights lawyer –

Tiawan Gongloe was tortured and came close to death during Liberia’s wars. He has spent half his life pleading for war crimes to be punished.

The 67-year-old describes his run for the presidency as a “breath of fresh air” on his website.

It’s the first time the lawyer is taking his case to the voters, but he is far from a political novice.

Prosecutor general and then labour minister under president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf from 2006 to 2010, corruption is his major target.

Gongloe, also from Nimba, vows to help the poorest and to ease access to education.

He uses a broom as his symbol, promising to clean up the mess left by bad governance and finally put those responsible for the horrors of the 1989-2003 civil war in the dock.