Category: BREAKING NEWS

A contingent of one thousand troops departed Uganda on Wednesday heading to the eastern part of the DRC.

The Ugandan troops will be operating under the regional East Africa Community force that includes Burundi and Kenya.

Hundreds of residents from both sides of the border between Uganda and the DRC attended the flag-off ceremony.

Uganda’s contingent is led by colonel Michael Hairoba. In his speech at the ceremony, he said: “We are going as ambassadors of peace in Congo.
We are prepared, we are trained, and are ready for the task”.

The East African Community force is meant to contain M23 rebels who started attacks on Congo army positions in June last year and occupied several areas.

Formed in 2012, the group attacked Congo and was overpowered by government troops. It had stopped attacks until last year.

Fourteen people, including students, have died after a university bus collided with a passenger vehicle in Kenya, west of the capital, on Thursday.

Police say 12 people died on the spot and two others succumbed on the way to the hospital.

The bus had 30 people on board and the death toll may rise, Rift Valley Police Chief Tom Odera said.

The bus was heading toward Nakuru town from the capital, Nairobi, when its driver lost control, hit an oncoming vehicle, and rolled into a ditch, he said.

Road accidents are common on Kenya’s roads. Traffic police have in the past cracked down on drivers violating speed limits and those driving while drunk.

Last week, the National Transport and Safety Authority said that 974 people had died in road crashes across the country since January.

The authority has been running a road safety campaign urging motorists to exercise caution, especially in the ongoing rainy season.

The death toll from Cyclone Freddy, which dissipated in mid-March after massive flooding and landslides in southern Africa, could exceed 1,200 in Malawi as hopes dwindle of finding survivors, police and authorities said Thursday.

The cyclone killed at least 676 people in Malawi, the epicenter of the disaster. And the country’s disaster management department says the chances of finding the 538 missing, more than two weeks after the disaster, have become painfully slim.

Search operations with sniffer dogs are continuing in some places, its head Charles Kalemba said on Wednesday, but no longer in hard-hit Blantyre, “as the team on the ground has informed us that they have done their best.

“Given the number of days that have passed, the chances of finding people alive are slim, which is why we will wait for the police to declare when we can consider that the missing persons are dead,” he said.

That decision is still premature, police spokesman Harry Namwaza told Africanewsguru tv on Thursday. “The police and the army are continuing the search. When we have completed this process, the time will come to declare the missing presumed dead.”

He did not comment on how long the search will take. “It is difficult to say because we are still reaching some places that were previously inaccessible. There is still work to do,” he added.

Formed in early February off Australia, the cyclone with exceptional longevity has made an unprecedented crossing of over 8,000 km from east to west in the Indian Ocean.

It followed a looping path rarely recorded by meteorologists, hitting Madagascar and Mozambique for the first time at the end of February, and then again in March for these two countries and Malawi.

In addition to the heavy toll in Malawi, Freddy also killed 165 people in Mozambique and another 17 in Madagascar, according to the UN.

Chad’s interim president, Mahamat Idriss Deby, has pardoned 380 rebels from group, The Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT).

They were part of a group of 400 people who were handed life sentences last Tuesday in connection with the 2021 death of his father, the country’s long-time ruler, Idriss Deby Itno.

He was killed when he went to visit troops fighting FACT on the frontline in northern Chad. The group had launched an offensive earlier that year from bases in Libya.

The rebels were found guilty of terrorism, undermining national security, endangering the life of the head of state, and the recruitment of children, among other charges.

The exiled leader of the rebel group, Mahamat Mahdi Ali, who was tried and convicted in absentia, was not included in the presidential pardon.

Idriss Deby, who was installed by the military junta after his father’s death, has held peace talks with various rebel groups since then.

But FACT has not taken part saying the transitional authorities needed to make gestures of peace first, including releasing prisoners.

He had promised to hold democratic elections after 18 months, which would have been in October 2022, but has now said the vote will take place in 2024.

This lead to violent anti-government protests in which at least 60 people died and hundreds others were arrested.

Zimbabwe is turning to coal from China to boost its power supply.

The country is struggling to meet its needs as power cuts can last up to 19 hours a day.

The economy depends on Hwange, its largest coal-fired station, for electricity.

On Monday a new generation unit started operating. It is first of two units, each with a capacity of 300 megawatts, largely financed by China.

Estimates suggest that Zimbabwe’s 16 million people would need about 1,700 megawatts of power daily, a far cry from what the country is capable of producing.

The situation has been made worse by the drought that currently affects the southern African country, in particular the Kariba Dam in northern Zimbabwe that is share with neighbouring Zambia.

Morroco has joined the Portugese and Spanish Football Associations joint bid to host the 2030 World Cup.

On Wednesday in Kigali, the European football staff went to the 73rd FIFA congress organised in Rwanda to validate the integration of the North African bid into the Spanish-Portuguese project.

“We are very happy to announce that Morocco will be incorporated in our bid. They are two continents, very close, the three countries very close. Each capital of each country is one hour difference from the others, it’s known that the our people, our population in every country is full of the enthusiasm with football. So in my opinion, this World Cup in 2030, organised by the three countries, could be a fantastic World”, Fernando Gomes, Portugal’s Football Association president said in Kigali.

Morocco’s inclusion will apparently replace Ukraine in the three-nation bid, which had said it would join Spain and Portugal in a joint effort in October.

The renewed alliance now means there will be two transcontinental bids, with the other being between Greece, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Chile are also jointly bidding to host the competition across South America.

Some 30 migrants are missing after a shipwreck on Sunday off the coast of Libya, during the rescue attempt by a cargo boat sailing in the area, two weeks after a shipwreck near Italy that left 76 dead.

“During the rescue operations, the boat turned over in full transfer of migrants: 17 people were rescued, but around 30 others are missing”, announced the Italian coast guard.

This new tragedy comes two weeks after the sinking, off Calabria (southern Italy), of a boat carrying some 180 people. It left 76 people dead and bodies continue to wash up on the shore every day.

Italian justice has opened an investigation into this tragedy, the maritime authorities being suspected of not having reacted quickly enough to reports of the presence of an overloaded ship in the area.

This sinking shocked Italy and aroused strong criticism against the far-right government of Giorgia Meloni elected on an anti-migrant line.

This weekend, NGOs reported that a boat carrying 47 people was drifting about a hundred kilometres from the Libyan coast. The rescue organization Alarm Phone, which runs a hotline for migrants in distress, was the first on Sunday to report that migrants had drowned.

In a statement, the Coast Guard said that Alarm Phone alerted the Rome Relief Coordination Center on Saturday of the presence of this boat in distress, as well as the Maltese and Libyan authorities.

A merchant vessel heading for the migrant boat reported difficulty in carrying out a rescue due to bad weather.

Meanwhile, the Libyan authorities, responsible for search and rescue efforts in this area, reported “a lack of availability of boats” and asked for help from Rome, which sent three other merchant ships to the area. towards the boat of the migrants, continues the press release.

“The migrant transfer operations began at first light” on Sunday when the “Froland” ship arrived on site, but the migrant boat capsized during the operation, according to the coast guard.

After embarking 17 migrants, the “Froland” headed for Malta to disembark two people in need of urgent medical attention. Cargo boats are still on site to try to find missing people, with the assistance of two Frontex planes.

“The rescue operation took place outside the Italian search and rescue (SAR) area, registering the inactivity of the other national maritime and rescue coordination centers involved in the area,” the coast guard said.

SeaWatch, a German NGO, tweeted on Saturday that its surveillance plane had spotted the migrant boat which was “dangerously overloaded and in frightening waves”. A little later, she reported on the deterioration of weather conditions and assured that “Tripoli claims not to be able to send a patrol”.