Roughly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, no massive outbreaks have been reported in refugee camps to date. Health experts have some theories about why, but they also urge continued wariness against “the very real and present danger of widespread transmission” in camps, as the World Health Organization has cautioned.

The U.N. refugee agency, or UNHCR, “had been fearing — and preparing for — large outbreaks at refugee camps, which fortunately did not happen,” spokeswoman Aikaterini Kitidi acknowledged in an email exchange with VOA.

“However, this doesn’t mean we are out of the woods yet,” she said. With new variants such as omicron, “which are far more infectious, we may very well see more cases. We must remain vigilant and scale up surveillance and testing, as well as the equitable distribution of vaccines.”

UNHCR estimates that roughly 80 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced by persecution and conflict, with most living in low-resource countries with frail health systems. Millions of them live in camps — some formal, some informal — with limited water and sanitation facilities. They also face overcrowding, making social distancing a challenge.

Yet comparatively few COVID infections have been reported in the camps: 55 Central African refugees tested positive in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance, as UNHCR reported in a global COVID-19 response update of December 20.

Because of population density, “early on, we were concerned that [COVID-19] transmission would be very high and so would deaths, even with the younger demographics” of refugee camps, said Paul Spiegel, an epidemiologist who directs Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Humanitarian Health. “That hasn’t been the case that we’re aware of — but then data have been very poor.”

Undercounting is a real possibility, Spiegel said. “There could be scenarios where it [COVID] actually has gone through the refugee camps at a high level” but symptoms weren’t severe enough for the infected people to seek care. He added that there hasn’t been enough blood testing “to know the extent that COVID has actually been transmitted in these settings. … It takes a lot of time and money to be able to do this.”

Individual circumstances

Transmission rates ultimately may vary depending on the individual camp or other setting, said Spiegel, a former UNHCR senior official who has responded to crises in the Middle East, parts of Africa and Asia. He was on a team that, early in the pandemic, advised the United Nations, governments and humanitarian groups on best responses.

In early December, Spiegel completed five weeks of touring and assessing health conditions in Afghanistan for the World Health Organization. In that country, he said, only three of 39 facilities intended for treating COVID were functioning; the rest were devoid of supplies or paid staff following the Taliban takeover in August and subsequent sanctions by the United States and other Western allies. Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department said it would lift restrictions on some humanitarian aid.

On behalf of UNHCR, Spiegel also is looking at COVID’s impact on two Syrian refugee camps in Jordan: Za’atari, a northern site with nearly 80,000 residents, and Azraq, a northeastern site hosting 38,000. Preliminary data indicate lower rates of infection and death in those two camps than among residents of surrounding areas, he said.

“So why would that be? We have some hypotheses,” Spiegel said, noting that those camps went into lockdown early, restricting refugees to the camp, limiting outsiders’ access, and promoting more handwashing and social distancing. Local and international NGOs sustained their support for the camps, he said, so residents could continue to access health care and food, “even if it’s not enough” to meet their caloric needs. He also noted that people in camps spend a lot of time outside.

Spiegel said he’s involved in additional studies of refugees and host communities in Bangladesh and in three African countries: Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. He said he anticipated their findings to be published in 2022.
…

Sudanese gunmen have looted a World Food Program (WFP) warehouse containing about 1,900 metric tons of food aid in Darfur amid a surge of violence in the western region, officials said Wednesday.

Residents of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, reported heavy gunfire near the warehouse late Tuesday, and the local authorities imposed a nighttime curfew on the town after the attack, state news agency SUNA reported.

“We heard intense gunfire,” local resident Mohamed Salem told AFP.

A WFP official said the organization was “conducting an audit into what was stolen from the warehouse, which contained some 1,900 [metric tons] of food products” intended to be lifesaving supplies for some of the most vulnerable people.

“One in three people in Sudan needs humanitarian assistance,” said Khardiata Lo N’diaye, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Sudan. “Humanitarian assistance should never be a target.”

On Twitter, Darfur Governor Mini Minawi denounced the raid as a “barbaric act” and said those responsible “will face justice.”

The vast, arid and impoverished region awash with guns is still reeling from a conflict that broke out under former President Omar al-Bashir in 2003, leaving hundreds of thousands of people dead.

While the main conflict in Darfur has subsided under a peace deal struck with key rebel groups last year, violence continues to erupt.

The region has seen a spike in conflict since October triggered by disputes over land, livestock and access to water and grazing, with around 250 people killed in fighting between herders and farmers.

Tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The violence has occurred while Sudan reels from political turbulence in the wake of a coup led by military chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan on October 25.

Last week, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned looting and reported violence near a former U.N. logistics base in El Fasher that had been handed over to the local authorities days earlier.

A joint U.N. and African Union mission, UNAMID, ended 13 years of peacekeeping operations in December last year, but Guterres said “substantial amounts of equipment and supplies” from the looted base were intended to be used by Sudanese communities.

More than 14 million Sudanese will need humanitarian aid next year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the highest level for a decade.
…

Tidal waves and coastal erosion have submerged an entire fishing community on Ghana’s eastern coast. Many villagers had already been relocated from past tidal waves and have petitioned the government for a permanent solution. Senanu Tord reports from the village of Fuvemeh in Ghana. 

Camera: Senanu Tord 

 
…

Rights groups in Kenya are pushing authorities to resettle tens of thousands of squatters evicted just ahead of the holidays to make way for a Chinese-backed expressway.  Brenda Mulinya reports from Nairobi.
…

A military tribunal in Cameroon this week sentenced 47 opposition party members to between one and seven years in jail for rebellion and attempted insurrection. Police arrested the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, or MRC, supporters in September 2020 while they were planning protests against the 40-year-rule of President Paul Biya.

More than 20 supporters of the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) on Wednesday morning stood in front of MRC leader Maurice Kamto’s house.  

They told a reporter they are waiting to hear from Kamto after a Yaoundé military tribunal this week sentenced 47 of his supporters to up to seven years in jail.   

The tribunal on Monday and Tuesday sentenced the 47 opposition party members to between one and seven years in jail for attempted insurrection. 

The MRC party’s spokesperson, treasurer, coordinator, and president of the women’s wing were among those given seven-year terms.  

41-year-old bread seller Emmanuel Koanye was among those condemning the prison terms.   

He says it is very wrong and abnormal for authorities, who claim they are democratic, to order the arrest and sentencing of people who simply expressed their democratic opinions.  Koanye says they are expecting Maurice Kamto, head of the MRC party, to give directives on what should be done to press for the release of the jailed opposition supporters.

Cameroonian police arrested the opposition members in September 2020 while they were planning protests against President Paul Biya’s long stay in power.

Biya has ruled Cameroon for four decades, making him Africa’s second longest ruling leader.  

Kamto claims he won the October 2018 presidential election in Cameroon and that Biya stole his victory.

More than 500 civilians who protested the crackdown also were arrested.

The MRC says more than 120 are still being held in prisons across Cameroon.

When contacted by VOA, MRC officials refused to comment on this week’s sentencing of their members. 

President of the opposition United Socialist Democratic Party (USDP) Prince Ekosso witnessed the military tribunal’s sentencing. 

Ekosso says the ruling shows that Biya will crush opponents to maintain his grip on power.

“It is so disturbing that in Cameroon laws are made to suit the caprices of individuals, to carry out intimidation and arbitrary arrests and sentencing of individuals,” Ekosso said. “Laws are supposed to be made to protect the individuals, to protect the citizens, and to help those citizens to emancipate.”

The USDP and MRC have been pressing for a change in Cameroon’s electoral code, which the opposition parties say favors President Biya. 

MRC leader Kamto said they plan to mobilize supporters to protest peacefully for electoral reforms in Cameroon from January 9. 

Cameroon is hosting the month-long Africa Football Cup of Nations, the continent’s premier soccer tournament, from January 9.

Cameroon’s territorial administration minister Paul Atanga Nji says authorities will not allow protests to release jailed opposition leaders or change the electoral code.   

Nji says Cameroon will not tolerate the disorder the government is aware MRC supporters, and their leader Maurice Kamto, are planning.  He says any MRC supporters and leaders who attempt to violate Cameroonian’s laws will be arrested and face charges in court.

Rights group Amnesty International accuses the Biya government of relentless repression of opposition members.  

In January 2019, authorities detained Kamto and several hundred of his supporters for insisting that Biya stole the 2018 presidential election.  

International pressure led Biya to pardon Kamto, but only after he had spent nine months in prison.
…

Just as in most cities across Africa, motorcycle taxi drivers are in almost every corner of Nairobi. Josephat Mutiso is among the first drivers here to make the switch from fossil fuel to electric motorcycles, thanks to a partnership between Uber and Opibus.

“This is way efficient,” he said. “It is even way easier to ride than the other one. You see, this one you don’t have so ma”ny controls, you just have the throttle, no clutch. The only thing you are focusing on is just the front brake and the rear brake. That way it gives you even more control of the bike. And it is pretty light, it does not vibrate. So even clients like this one better.”    

Motorcycle taxis have become increasingly common as public transportation in cities across Africa.  

Joyce Msuya, the deputy executive director of UNEP, the U.N. Environmental Program, notes that motorcycle taxis have become increasingly common as public transportation in cities across Africa.  

“The number of newly registered motorcycles, commonly used as taxis or boda boda, was estimated in 2018 at 1.5 million and will likely grow to five million by 2030,” she said. “Most are inefficient, poorly maintained and heavily polluting. UNEP’s study shows that boda boda drivers can more than double their income if they make the switch.”

In March, the U.N. Environment Program launched the first electric bikes project in Kenya, creating the momentum for Africa’s shift to electric mobility. The partnership between Uber and Opibus seeks to accelerate that shift.   

“We are just excited to get as many people exposed to the new technology that we built as possible so they know there is an option,” said Alex Pitkin, the chief technology officer at Opibus. “Uber provides, obviously, a lot of boda boda riders, that’s our target client. They often don’t know how beneficial electric motorcycles can be in terms of money-saving, safety, fuel savings, maintenance savings, you know that kind of thing. And longevity of the product as well, they don’t know that.”  

Across the world, there is a shift toward electric vehicles due to rising pollution and climate-damaging emissions from vehicles.  

The African continent has not been left behind in that movement.   

“Targeting Africa and African countries is also part of that movement and as Opibus, that is where we are targeting,” said Lucy Mugala, an engineer at Opibus. “We want all of us to move together. We all move towards a greener energy, a greener economy. And we can only do that if we all come together and empower and build capacity locally.”     

Mutiso says he is earning more money now.  

“Everything I used to earn and save for the maintenance of the bike,” he said. “Right now I’m saving it. So right now, I’m making more.”  

Experts say that a global move to electric mobility is essential to the future and that drivers like Mutiso will benefit.  
…

Cape Town is hosting an interfaith service Wednesday to honor Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. 

The city said the event at city hall would be attended by members of Tutu’s family along with representatives of different faiths. 

It is just one of many tributes to Tutu being held this week following his death Sunday at the age of 90. 

Tutu is due to lie in state Thursday and Friday at St. George’s Cathedral, his former parish in Cape Town. 

A funeral Saturday will be limited to 100 attendees due to coronavirus restrictions. Tutu’s ashes will later be interred at the cathedral’s mausoleum. 

Each day this week, the bells at the cathedral are tolling for 10 minutes, and a guest book was placed outside for mourners to sign. 

Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate, was known worldwide for anti-apartheid activism and as a champion of human rights. 

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Sudanese authorities said at least 38 people were killed Tuesday when a defunct gold mine collapsed in West Kordofan province.

The country’s state-run mining company said in a statement the collapse of the closed, non-functioning mine happened in the village of Fuja 700 kilometers (435 miles) south of the capital, Khartoum. It said there were also injuries without giving a specific tally.

Local media reported that several shafts collapsed at the Darsaya mine, and that besides the dead at least eight injured people were taken to a local hospital.

The mining company posted images on Facebook showing villagers gathering at the site as at least two dredgers worked to find possible survivors and bodies.

Other images showed people preparing traditional graves to bury the dead.

The company said the mine was not functional but local miners returned to work it after security forces guarding the site left the area. It did not say when the mine stopped working.

The Sudanese Mineral Resources Limited Company in its statement called for troops to guard the site to prevent unregulated mining. It also called on local communities to help it resume its mining activities in the area, which were suspended in 2019. It did not elaborate.

Sudan is a major gold producer with numerous mines scattered across the country. In 2020, the East African nation produced 36.6 tons, the second most on the continent, according to official numbers.

The transitional government has begun regulating the industry in the past two years amid allegations of gold smuggling.

Collapses are common in Sudan’s gold mines, where safety standards are not widely in effect.
…

Somalia’s opposition presidential candidates have called on President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, popularly known as Farmajo, to leave office after he attempted to force the prime minister from power.

The council of the presidential candidates in Somalia issued the call one day after Farmajo suspended Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble, accusing him of corruption and failure to conduct elections. The prime minister has denied the allegations, accusing the president of orchestrating a coup.

The opposition candidates called for an investigation into what they termed treason, and for the national consultative council, consisting of federal and other leaders from five states, to immediately address grievances about already delayed parliamentary elections. 

There has been no comment from Farmajo on the latest developments, which have escalated a dispute between the two politicians over the delayed vote and who will lead the country. Critics say the president is looking to stay in power by any means necessary. Farmajo took office in February 2017. His term formally ended in February. 

The international community, including the U.S. Embassy in Mogadishu, has since urged Somali leaders to avoid violent actions and initiate dialogue to resolve their differences in order to expedite the vote. 

Parliamentary elections were supposed to conclude before the end of the year but are nowhere near complete with just more than 50 members of parliament out of 275 selected so far by tribal delegates. 

 
…

Cameroon’s military has released health workers detained for several days who were working for the aid group Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF.  The military says the workers were helping a wounded rebel leader, who also was detained, and they are still being investigated.  MSF has condemned the detentions, the latest incident between the group and Cameroon’s military.

Cameroon’s military alleged that MSF this week deliberately engaged in a clandestine operation to exfiltrate armed rebels. 

In a statement, the military says Mbu Princely Tabe and Bessong Eugene, two self-proclaimed separatists generals contacted MSF Sunday to help fighters wounded in a battle with Cameroon government troops in Tinto, a southwestern farming village.

The statement by military spokesperson, Army Captain Cyrille Serge Atonfack Guemo, says after a tipoff, an ambulance belonging to MSF was intercepted by the military in Nguti with Mbu Princely receiving treatment inside the ambulance. Nguti is a commercial town in Cameroon’s English speaking Southwest region.

The military said one of the rebel generals, Bessong Eugene, died and was buried in the bush before MSF arrived to save the lives of wounded fighters. 

Bernard Okalia Bilai, the governor of Cameroon’s Southwest region, says he is surprised that MSF decided to help a dreaded self-proclaimed separatist general who was wounded in an armed battle with government troops. He says the dangerous fighter has killed many civilians and destroyed a great deal of property, including public edifices. Bilai says MSF was helping the criminal known by the Cameroon government troops as a terrorist to escape from the military.

Bilai said two MSF staff held by the military for questioning were released after two days but gave no further details.

MSF has denied it was helping any rebels to escape from the military. In a statement, MSF said Sunday the aid group contacted Cameroon military authorities and informed government troops of plans to transfer a wounded patient for medical assistance at Mutengene, another English-speaking southwestern town. 

MSF says its ambulance was intercepted by government forces and taken to a different location. In the statement, MSF says it treats people based on medical need, regardless of their background or affiliations.

Felix Agbor Balla, a human rights lawyer and founder of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, says MSF is working in accordance with the Geneva conventions, which require people wounded in conflicts to be treated humanely without any adverse distinction based on sex, race, nationality, religion, political opinions, or any other similar criteria. 

Balla says MSF cannot give the identities of all the people it is treating to the military as requested by the government.

“If Doctors Without Borders starts informing the government in detail of each and every patient, then the independence, the confidentiality is no longer there. Government is trying to put Doctors Without Borders in harm’s way,” said Balla. “I would recommend that Doctors Without Borders and the government should sit down and have a discussion. Government can criticize Doctors Without Borders, but we should not forget the wonderful work that Doctors Without Borders has been doing in this country.”

MSF has been in Cameroon since 1984. The aid group gives medical assistance to people suffering Boko Haram atrocities in Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria. MSF provides surgical care, malaria treatment and treatment for COVID-19 patients in Cameroons restive English-speaking southwest region. The group says it treated more than a million patients in Cameroon in 2020.

In 2020, Cameroon suspended MSF from carrying out activities in the English-speaking northwest region. The government accused MSF of having close relations with separatists who are fighting to create an independent English-speaking state. The aid organization strongly denies the accusations and says its only goal is to save lives. 

The U.N. says the separatist crisis that began in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions in 2017 has killed more than 3,300 people and displaced 750,000, both internally and to neighboring Nigeria. 
…

Mali’s military government has denied hiring Russian mercenaries from the controversial Wagner Group, which has been sanctioned by the European Union for rights abuses. France and 15 other Western nations last week condemned what they said was Russia’s deployment of Wagner fighters to Mali. Mali’s transitional government says it is only engaged with official Russian military trainers. Analysts weigh in on Russia’s military involvement in Mali as French troops are drawing down.

Mali’s transitional government this month denied what it called “baseless allegations” that it hired the controversial Russian security firm the Wagner Group to help fight Islamist insurgents.  

Western governments and U.N. experts have accused Wagner of rights abuses, including killing civilians, in the Central African Republic and Libya.  

The response came Friday after Western nations made the accusations, which Mali’s military government dismissed with a demand that they provide independent evidence.  

A day earlier, France and 15 other Western nations had condemned what they called the deployment of Wagner mercenaries to Mali.  

The joint statement said they deeply regret the transitional authorities’ choice to use already scarce public funds to pay foreign mercenaries instead of supporting its own armed forces and the Malian people.

The statement also called on the Russian government to behave more responsibly, accusing it of providing material support to the Wagner Group’s deployment, which Moscow denies.  

The Mali government acknowledged what it called “Russian trainers” were in the country.  It said they were present to help strengthen the operational capacities of their defense and security forces.  

Aly Tounkara is director of the Center for Security and Strategic Studies in the Sahel, a Bamako-based think tank.  

He says it’s hard to tell if the Russian security presence is military or mercenary but, regardless, would likely be supporting rather than front-line fighting.    

This could allow the Malian army to have victories over the enemy that will be attributed to them, says Tounkara, which was not the case with the French forces.  He says the second advantage is that victories over extremists could allow Mali’s military to legitimize itself.  We must remember, says Tounkara, that one of the reasons for the forced departure of President Keita, was that the security situation was so bad.

Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was overthrown in an August 2020 coup led by Colonel Assimi Goita after months of anti-government protests, much of it over worsening security.  

Goita launched a second coup in May that removed the interim government leaders, but has promised to hold elections in 2022.  

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been pushing Mali’s military government to hold elections.  

ECOWAS in November expressed concern over a potential Wagner Group deployment to Mali after unconfirmed reports that the military government was in talks with the mercenary group.

Popular protests in Bamako have called for French forces to leave Mali and last year some protesters were seen calling for Russian ones to intervene.

Since French forces first arrived in Mali in 2013, public opinion on their presence has shifted from favorable to widely negative.  

The French military has been gradually drawing down its anti-insurgent Operation Barkhane forces from the Sahel region.

French forces this year withdrew from all but one military base in northern Mali, saying the Malian armed forces were ready to take the lead on their own security.

But analysts say one consequence of the French leaving is that the Malian army is seeking other partners. 

Boubacar Salif Traore is director of Afriglob Conseil, a Bamako-based development and security consulting firm. 

“Official Russian cooperation would be very advantageous for the Malian army in terms of supplying equipment,” he says. “Mali, and many African countries, notably the Central African Republic, have concluded that France does not play fair in terms of delivering arms.  Every time these states ask for weapons, either there’s an embargo or there is a problem in procuring these weapons. Russia can provide these weapons without constraints and it’s precisely that which interests Mali.” 

In September, Mali received four military helicopters and other weapons bought from Russia.  

The Malian transitional government’s statement Friday did not elaborate on what the Russian trainers would be doing in Mali. 

When asked to comment, a government spokesman would not elaborate and referred questions to the ministry of foreign affairs, which does not list any contact numbers on its website. 
…

Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s legacy is reverberating among young South Africans, many of whom were not born when the clergyman battled apartheid and sought full rights for the nation’s Black majority. 

Tutu, who died Sunday at the age of 90, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for those efforts. 

Even though they did not know much about him, some young South Africans told The Associated Press on Monday that they understood his role as one of the most prominent figures to help their country become a democracy. 

Zinhle Gamede, 16, said she found out about Tutu’s passing on social media and has learned more about him over the past day. 

“At first I only knew that he was an archbishop. I really did not know much else,” Gamede said. 

She said Tutu’s death had inspired her to learn more about South Africa’s history, especially the struggle against white minority rule.

“I think that people who fought for our freedom are great people. We are in a better place because of them. Today I am living my life freely, unlike in the olden days where there was no freedom,” she said. 

Following the end of apartheid in 1994, when South Africa became a democracy, Tutu chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that documented atrocities during apartheid and sought to promote national reconciliation. Tutu also became one of the world’s most prominent religious leaders to champion LGBTQ rights. 

“As a gay person, it is rare to hear people from the church speaking openly about gay issues, but I found out about him through gay activists who sometimes use his quotes during campaigns,” said Lesley Morake, 25. “That is how I knew about him, and that is what I will remember about him.” 

Tshepo Nkatlo, 32, said he is focusing on the positive things he hears about Tutu, instead of some negative sentiments he saw on social media. 

“One of the things I picked up on Facebook and Twitter was that some people were criticizing him for the TRC (Truth and Reconciliation Commission) because there are still many issues regarding the TRC,” Nkatlo said, referring to some who say Tutu should have been tougher on whites who perpetrated abuses under apartheid and should have ordered that they be prosecuted. 

South Africa is holding a week of mourning for Tutu. Bells rang at midday Monday from St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in Cape Town to honor him. The bells at “the people’s cathedral,” where Tutu worked to unite South Africans of all races against apartheid, will toll for 10 minutes at noon for five days to mark Tutu’s life. 

“We ask all who hear the bells to pause their busy schedules for a moment in tribute” to Tutu, the current archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, said. Anglican churches across South Africa will also ring their bells at noon this week, and the Angelus prayer will be recited. 

Several services in South Africa were being planned to honor Tutu’s life, as tributes came in from around the world. 

Tutu’s coffin will be displayed Friday at the cathedral in Cape Town to allow the public to file past the casket, “which will reflect the simplicity with which he asked to be buried,” Makgoba said in a statement. On Friday night Tutu’s body will “lie alone in the cathedral which he loved.” 

A requiem Mass will be celebrated Saturday, and, according to Tutu’s wishes, he will be cremated and his ashes placed in the cathedral’s mausoleum, church officials said Monday. 

In addition, an ecumenical and interfaith service will be held for Tutu on Thursday in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria.

South Africans are laying flowers at the cathedral, in front of Tutu’s home in Cape Town’s Milnerton area and in front of his former home in Soweto. 

President Cyril Ramaphosa visited Tutu’s home Monday in Cape Town where he paid his respects to Tutu’s widow, Leah. 

“He knew in his soul that good would triumph over evil, that justice would prevail over iniquity, and that reconciliation would prevail over revenge and recrimination. He knew that apartheid would end, that democracy would come,” Ramaphosa said Sunday night in a nationally broadcast address. 

“He knew that our people would be free. By the same measure, he was convinced, even to the end of his life, that poverty, hunger and misery can be defeated; that all people can live together in peace, security and comfort,” Ramaphosa said and added that South Africa’s flags will be flown at half-staff this week. 

“May we follow in his footsteps,” Ramaphosa said. “May we, too, be worthy inheritors of the mantle of service, of selflessness, of courage, and of principled solidarity with the poor and marginalized.” 
…

South Africa has started a week of mourning for Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who died Sunday at the age of 90.  Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral will toll its bells every day at noon through Friday in honor of the anti-apartheid hero before a Saturday funeral service.

The bells at St. George’s Cathedral rang out for 10-minutes on Monday. It was here that Archbishop Tutu gave refuge to many during the dark days of apartheid.

His non-violent campaign won him international recognition including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. He was also greatly loved by his countrymen and women. Veteran journalist Ayesha Ismail explains.

“You know as a South African and as a journalist when I think about Archbishop Desmond Tutu, I think about love, I think about justice, I think about peace and I think about compassion. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the one who opened the doors of this cathedral when we were fighting the apartheid regime during the height of apartheid and during the state of emergency, we were teargassed, we were sjambokked and it was the archbishop who opened these doors for us to come and seek refuge. He will be deeply missed and I think I can safely say that South Africa has lost its moral compass,” said the journalist.

Once democracy was established in South Africa in 1994, Tutu continued to campaign for human rights, championing all kinds of causes around the world.

In recent years, he also spoke out against the African National Congress which is in power in South Africa. He was outraged by the unchecked corruption within the party.

Children and young people were close to his heart. He was a patron of many trusts. The CEO of one of them, Jason Falken, said even when Tutu was ill, the archbishop was in email contact with him so they could work out a plan to ensure funding came in after he passed on.

“Not only for the trust but for our beneficiaries the Tygerberg Children’s Hospital it’s been immense. You know the arch and Ma Leah their many visits to the hospital were always filled with joy and laughter and the kids really look out for that. But over and above that, the arch was also very instrumental, especially in the early years of the trust in raising significant funds specifically for the purpose of much-needed medical equipment which ran into the hundreds of thousands of rand,” he said.

The assistant priest at St. George’s Cathedral, Marcus Slingers, said it was a great privilege to have visited Tutu at his home in Milnerton, a Cape Town suburb, for about 40 minutes each day.

“We are all saddened by this great loss. The dean and I and others, you know in these last few months, had the opportunity of celebrating the eucharist with him every day and that was part of his life and I’ve just been privileged to have been part of it. And what a man of God and humble,” he said.

The archbishop’s 66-year marriage to Leah Tutu was admired by many. They had four children: Trevor, Thandeka, Naomi and Mpho. Father Marcus said on his visits to Tutu, Mrs. Tutu would tell him stories over cups of tea about how they supported each other.

“And how the two of them had just done things together. Everything that they’ve done, they’ve done together and our hearts and our prayers, our thoughts are with her and the rest of the family,” he said.

A number of events are planned for this week, including a memorial service which the South African Council of Churches will host on Wednesday.

Archbishop Tutu’s body will lie in state at St. George’s Cathedral on Friday. His funeral will take place there on Saturday.
…

Despite shaky health systems and vaccine drives, the coronavirus pandemic did not hit Africa as badly as many feared.  But it did take a toll on the continent’s economies in 2021, as movement was restricted, and also underscored vaccine inequalities.  Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg.
…

The political rift between two of Somalia’s top leaders worsened Monday when President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed announced that he is suspending Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble.   

A spokesman for President Mohamed, popularly known as Farmajo, said he took the action due to an investigation into an illegal purchase of public land involving Prime Minister Roble. 

Roble’s suspension comes a day after the prime minister accused Mohamed of sabotaging parliamentary elections.   

Reuters is reporting that security forces have been deployed around Roble’s offices, which the country’s assistant information minister has described as “an indirect coup.” 

The feuding leaders had reached an agreement earlier this year that would allow 101 delegates to select members of parliament, who would choose the next head of the state.  

Observers warn the feud between Farmajo and Roble could distract the government from the ongoing threat from the violent al Qaida-linked al Shabab insurgent group, which has fought the central government in a bid to seize power and impose sharia law in Somalia, which has been plagued by decades of chaos and conflict since the overthrow of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. 
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Computers have become amazingly precise at translating spoken words to text messages and scouring huge troves of information for answers to complex questions. At least, that is, so long as you speak English or another of the world’s dominant languages.

But try talking to your phone in Yoruba, Igbo or any number of widely spoken African languages and you’ll find glitches that can hinder access to information, trade, personal communications, customer service and other benefits of the global tech economy.

“We are getting to the point where if a machine doesn’t understand your language it will be like it never existed,” said Vukosi Marivate, chief of data science at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, in a call to action before a December virtual gathering of the world’s artificial intelligence researchers.

American tech giants don’t have a great track record of making their language technology work well outside the wealthiest markets, a problem that’s also made it harder for them to detect dangerous misinformation on their platforms.

Marivate is part of a coalition of African researchers who have been trying to change that. Among their projects is one that found machine translation tools failed to properly translate online COVID-19 surveys from English into several African languages.

“Most people want to be able to interact with the rest of the information highway in their local language,” Marivate said in an interview. He’s a founding member of Masakhane, a pan-African research project to improve how dozens of languages are represented in the branch of AI known as natural language processing. It’s the biggest of a number of grassroots language technology projects that have popped up from the Andes to Sri Lanka.

Tech giants offer their products in numerous languages, but they don’t always pay attention to the nuances necessary for those apps work in the real world. Part of the problem is that there’s just not enough online data in those languages — including scientific and medical terms — for the AI systems to effectively learn how to get better at understanding them. 

Google, for instance, offended members of the Yoruba community several years ago when its language app mistranslated Esu, a benevolent trickster god, as the devil. Facebook’s language misunderstandings have been tied to political strife around the world and its inability to tamp down harmful misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. More mundane translation glitches have been turned into joking online memes.

Omolewa Adedipe has grown frustrated trying to share her thoughts on Twitter in the Yoruba language because her automatically translated tweets usually end up with different meanings.

One time, the 25-year-old content designer tweeted, “T’Ílù ò bà dùn, T’Ílù ò bà t’òrò. Èyin l’ęmò bí ę şe şé,”which means, “If the land (or country, in this context) is not peaceful, or merry, you’re responsible for it.” Twitter, however, managed to end up with the translation: “If you are not happy, if you are not happy.”

For complex Nigerian languages like Yoruba, those accent marks — often associated with tones — make all the difference in communication. ‘Ogun’, for instance, is a Yoruba word that means war, but it can also mean a state in Nigeria (Ògùn), god of iron (Ògún), stab (Ógún), twenty or property (Ogún).

“Some of the bias is deliberate given our history,” said Marivate, who has devoted some of his AI research to the southern African languages of Xitsonga and Setswana spoken by his family members, as well as to the common conversational practice of “code-switching” between languages.

“The history of the African continent and in general in colonized countries, is that when language had to be translated, it was translated in a very narrow way,” he said. “You were not allowed to write a general text in any language because the colonizing country might be worried that people communicate and write books about insurrections or revolutions. But they would allow religious texts.”

Google and Microsoft are among the companies that say they are trying to improve technology for so-called “low-resource” languages that AI systems don’t have enough data for. Computer scientists at Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, announced in November a breakthrough on the path to a “universal translator” that could translate multiple languages at once and work better with lower-resourced languages such as Icelandic or Hausa.

That’s an important step, but at the moment, only large tech companies and big AI labs in developed countries can build these models, said David Ifeoluwa Adelani. He’s a researcher at Saarland University in Germany and another member of Masakhane, which has a mission to strengthen and spur African-led research to address technology “that does not understand our names, our cultures, our places, our history.”

Improving the systems requires not just more data but careful human review from native speakers who are underrepresented in the global tech workforce. It also requires a level of computing power that can be hard for independent researchers to access.

Writer and linguist Kola Tubosun created a multimedia dictionary for the Yoruba language and also created a text-to-speech machine for the language. He is now working on similar speech recognition technologies for Nigeria’s two other major languages, Hausa and Igbo, to help people who want to write short sentences and passages.

“We are funding ourselves,” he said. “The aim is to show these things can be profitable.”

Tubosun led the team that created Google’s “Nigerian English” voice and accent used in tools like maps. But he said it remains difficult to raise the money needed to build technology that might allow a farmer to use a voice-based tool to follow market or weather trends.

In Rwanda, software engineer Remy Muhire is helping to build a new open-source speech dataset for the Kinyawaranda language that involves a lot of volunteers recording themselves reading Kinyawaranda newspaper articles and other texts.

“They are native speakers. They understand the language,” said Muhire, a fellow at Mozilla, maker of the Firefox internet browser. Part of the project involves a collaboration with a government-supported smartphone app that answers questions about COVID-19. To improve the AI systems in various African languages, Masakhane researchers are also tapping into news sources across the continent, including Voice of America’s Hausa service and the BBC broadcast in Igbo.

Increasingly, people are banding together to develop their own language approaches instead of waiting for elite institutions to solve problems, said Damián Blasi, who researches linguistic diversity at the Harvard Data Science Initiative.

Blasi co-authored a recent study that analyzed the uneven development of language technology across the world’s more than 6,000 languages. For instance, it found that while Dutch and Swahili both have tens of millions of speakers, there are hundreds of scientific reports on natural language processing in the Western European language and only about 20 in the East African one.
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1931 – Oct. 7 – Desmond Mpilo Tutu is born in Klerksdorp, near Johannesburg.

1947 – Contracts tuberculosis, as he recuperates, he is visited by Trevor Huddleston, a British Anglican pastor working in South Africa. 

1955 – Marries Nomalizo Leah Shenxane and begins teaching at a secondary school in Johannesburg.

1961 – Is ordained as a minister in the Anglican church, after quitting teaching in disgust at South Africa’s apartheid government’s inferior education for Blacks.

1962 – Studies theology at King’s College London.

1966 – Returns to South Africa to teach at a seminary in the Eastern Cape.

1975 – Becomes the Anglican Church’s first Black dean of Johannesburg.

1976 – Serves as Bishop of Lesotho and voices criticism of apartheid in South Africa.

1978 – Becomes general-secretary of the South African Council of Churches and achieves global prominence as a leading opponent of apartheid, supports economic sanctions to achieve majority rule in South Africa.

1984 – Wins Nobel Peace Prize – “There is no peace in southern Africa. There is no peace because there is no justice. There can be no real peace and security until there be first justice enjoyed by all the inhabitants of that beautiful land,” Tutu says in his acceptance speech.

1985 – Becomes the first Black bishop of Johannesburg.

1986 – Is ordained the first Black Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town.

1989 – Leads anti-apartheid march of 30,000 people through Cape Town. 

1990 – Hosts Nelson Mandela for his first night of freedom after Mandela is released from prison after being held for 27 years for his opposition to apartheid. Mandela calls Tutu “the people’s archbishop.”

1994 – Votes in South Africa’s first democratic election in which all races can cast ballots.

1995 – President Nelson Mandela appoints Tutu to be chairman of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

1996 – Tutu retires as prelate, the Anglican Church gives him the title of Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town.

1997 – Is diagnosed with prostate cancer and announces it to help with public awareness of the disease. 

1998 – Truth and Reconciliation Commission publishes its report, putting most of the blame for abuses on the forces of apartheid, but also finds the African National Congress guilty of human rights violations. The ANC sues to block the document’s release, earning a rebuke from Tutu.

2009 – Aug. 12 – Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama. 

2010 – July 22 – Retires from public life, tells press: “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” 

2013 – Launches international campaign for LGBTQ rights in Cape Town. “I would not worship a God who is homophobic.” 

2014 – July 12 – Urges the British parliament to allow assisted dying, saying, “The manner of Nelson Mandela’s prolonged death was an affront.” 

2021 – Oct. 7 – Frail, in a wheelchair, Tutu attends his 90th birthday celebration at St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. 

2021 – Dec. 26 – Tutu dies in Cape Town.
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Authorities in eastern Congo announced an evening curfew and new security checkpoints Sunday, fearing more violence after a suicide bomber killed five people in the first attack of its kind in the region.

Beni Mayor Narcisse Muteba, a police colonel, warned hotels, churches and bars in the town of Beni that they needed to add security guards with metal detectors because “terrorists” could strike again.

“We are asking people to be vigilant and to avoid public places during this festive period,” Muteba told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Brig. Gen. Constant Ndima, the military governor of North Kivu province, said there will be a 7 p.m. curfew, as well as more road checkpoints.

Officials initially said the death toll was six plus the suicide bomber, but they revised that figure a day later to five victims. Thirteen others remained hospitalized after the blast at the entrance to the Inbox restaurant on Christmas Day.

Saturday’s bloodshed dramatically deepened fears that Islamic extremism has taken hold in Beni. The town already has suffered years of attacks by rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, who trace their origins to neighboring Uganda. 

Officials have blamed the latest attack on those rebels, whose exact links to international extremist groups have been murky. The Islamic State’s Central Africa Province has claimed responsibility for attacks blamed on ADF, but it is unknown what role exactly the larger group may have played in organizing and financing the attacks.

There have been worrying signs that religious extremism was escalating around Beni: Two local imams were killed earlier this year within weeks of each other, one of whom had spoken out against the ADF.

Then in June, the Islamic State group’s Central Africa Province claimed responsibility for a suicide bomber who blew himself up near a bar in Beni without harming others. Another explosion that same day at a Catholic church wounded two people.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Saturday’s attack, in which authorities say the bomber ultimately was stopped from entering the crowded restaurant. After the blast near the entrance, blood stained the pavement and mangled chairs lay strewn near the entrance.

Rachel Magali, who had been at the restaurant with her sister-in-law and several others, described hearing a loud noise and then people starting to cry.

“We rushed to the exit where I saw people lying down,” she told the AP. “There were green plastic chairs scattered everywhere and I also saw heads and arms no longer attached. It was really horrible.”
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The bodies of 28 migrants have washed up on Libya’s western coast after their boat sunk, a security official said Sunday, the latest tragedy on the world’s deadliest migration route. 

“Libyan Red Crescent teams recovered 28 bodies of dead migrants and found three survivors at two different sites on the beaches of Al-Alous,” some 90 kilometers (55 miles) from Tripoli, the source said. 

“The bodies’ advanced state of decomposition indicates that the shipwreck happened several days ago,” he said, adding the toll could rise in the coming hours. 

Images published by Libyan media outlets showed corpses lined up along the shore then placed in body bags. 

Libya, wracked by a decade of conflict and lawlessness, has become a key departure point for African and Asian migrants making desperate attempts to reach Europe. 

Migrants often endure horrific conditions in Libya before embarking northwards on overcrowded, often unseaworthy vessels that frequently sink or get into trouble. 

The latest tragedy comes just days after 160 migrants died within a week in similar incidents, bringing the total number of lives lost this year to 1,500, according to the International Organization for Migration. 

The IOM says more than 30,000 migrants have been intercepted in the same period and returned to Libya. 

The European Union has cooperated closely with the Libyan Coast Guard to cut numbers of migrants arriving on European shores. 

On their return, many face further horrific abuses in detention centers. 

 
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 Sudanese authorities said on Sunday that 58 police personnel had been injured during protests the previous day against military rule, and that tear gas had been used only to confront attacks on security facilities and vehicles, state TV reported. 

The Khartoum security committee’s statement added that 114 people had been arrested and faced prosecution after Saturday’s protests, the latest in a series of rallies against an Oct. 25 coup that upended a transition towards democratic elections. 

Medics aligned with the protest movement said earlier that violence by security forces had caused 178 injuries among demonstrators, including eight with live bullet wounds. 

At least 48 people have been killed in crackdowns on protests against the coup, the medics say. 

Internet and phone communications were disrupted on Saturday, and security forces fired tear gas as they blocked protesters from reaching the presidential palace. 

A deal announced by the military in November to reinstate Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has failed to stem the protests, which are calling for the military to withdraw from politics altogether.
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“Like falling in love” is how Archbishop Desmond Tutu described voting in South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, a remark that captured both his puckish humor and his profound emotions after decades fighting apartheid.

Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the Nobel Peace laureate whose moral might permeated South African society during apartheid’s darkest hours and into the unchartered territory of new democracy, has died, South Africa’s presidency said on Sunday. He was 90.

The outspoken Tutu was considered the nation’s conscience by both Black and white, an enduring testament to his faith and spirit of reconciliation in a divided nation.

He preached against the tyranny of white minority and even after its end, he never wavered in his fight for a fairer South Africa, calling the Black political elite to account with as much feistiness as he had the white Afrikaners.

In his final years, he regretted that his dream of a “Rainbow Nation” had not yet come true.

On the global stage, the human rights activist spoke out across a range of topics, from Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories to gay rights, climate change and assisted death — issues that cemented Tutu’s broad appeal.

“The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Just 1.68 meters tall and with an infectious giggle, Tutu was a moral giant who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his nonviolent struggle against apartheid.

He used his high-profile role in the Anglican Church to highlight the plight of Black South Africans.

Asked on his retirement as Archbishop of Cape Town in 1996 if he had any regrets, Tutu said: “The struggle tended to make one abrasive and more than a touch self-righteous. I hope that people will forgive me any hurts I may have caused them.”

Talking and traveling tirelessly throughout the 1980s, Tutu became the face of the anti-apartheid movement abroad while many of the leaders of the rebel African National Congress, such as Nelson Mandela, were behind bars.

“Our land is burning and bleeding and so I call on the international community to apply punitive sanctions against this government,” he said in 1986.

Even as governments ignored the call, he helped rouse grassroots campaigns around the world that fought for an end to apartheid through economic and cultural boycotts.

Former hardline white president P.W. Botha asked Tutu in a letter in March 1988 whether he was working for the kingdom of God or for the kingdom promised by the then-outlawed and now ruling ANC.

Graveside orations

Among his most painful tasks was delivering graveside orations for Black people who had died violently during the struggle against white domination.

“We are tired of coming to funerals, of making speeches week after week. It is time to stop the waste of human lives,” he once said.

Tutu said his stance on apartheid was moral rather than political.

“It’s easier to be a Christian in South Africa than anywhere else, because the moral issues are so clear in this country,” he once told Reuters.

In February 1990, Tutu led Nelson Mandela on to a balcony at Cape Town’s City Hall overlooking a square where the ANC talisman made his first public address after 27 years in prison.

He was at Mandela’s side four years later when he was sworn in as the country’s first Black president.

“Sometimes strident, often tender, never afraid and seldom without humor, Desmond Tutu’s voice will always be the voice of the voiceless,” is how Mandela, who died in December 2013, described his friend.

While Mandela introduced South Africa to democracy, Tutu headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that laid bare the terrible truths of the war against white rule.

Some of the heartrending testimony moved him publicly to tears.

Pulled no punches

But Tutu was as tough on the new democracy as he was on South Africa’s apartheid rulers.

He castigated the new ruling elite for boarding the “gravy train” of privilege and chided Mandela for his long public affair with Graca Machel, whom he eventually married.

In his Truth Commission report, Tutu refused to treat the excesses of the ANC in the fight against white rule any more gently than those of the apartheid government.

Even in his twilight years, he never stopped speaking his mind, condemning President Jacob Zuma over allegations of corruption surrounding a $23 million security upgrade to his home.

In 2014, he admitted he did not vote for the ANC, citing moral grounds.

“As an old man, I am sad because I had hoped that my last days would be days of rejoicing, days of praising and commending the younger people doing the things that we hoped so very much would be the case,” Tutu told Reuters in June 2014.

In December 2003, he rebuked his government for its support for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, despite growing criticism over his human rights record.

Tutu drew a parallel between Zimbabwe’s isolation and South Africa’s battle against apartheid.

“We appealed for the world to intervene and interfere in South Africa’s internal affairs. We could not have defeated apartheid on our own,” Tutu said. “What is sauce for the goose must be sauce for the gander too.”

He also criticized South African President Thabo Mbeki for his public questioning of the link between HIV and AIDS, saying Mbeki’s international profile had been tarnished.

Schoolteacher’s son 

A schoolteacher’s son, Tutu was born in Klerksdorp, a conservative town west of Johannesburg, on Oct. 7, 1931.

The family moved to Sophiatown in Johannesburg, one of the commercial capital’s few mixed-race areas, subsequently demolished under apartheid laws to make way for the white suburb of Triomf — “Triumph” in Afrikaans.

Always a passionate student, Tutu first worked as a teacher. But he said he had become infuriated with the system of educating Blacks, once described by a South African prime minister as aimed at preparing them for their role in society as servants.

Tutu quit teaching in 1957 and decided to join the church, studying first at St. Peter’s Theological College in Johannesburg. He was ordained a priest in 1961 and continued his education at King’s College in London.

After four years abroad, he returned to South Africa, where his sharp intellect and charismatic preaching saw him rise through lecturing posts to become Anglican dean of Johannesburg in 1975, which was when his activism started taking shape.

“I realized that I had been given a platform that was not readily available to many Blacks, and most of our leaders were either now in chains or in exile. And I said: ‘Well, I’m going to use this to seek to try to articulate our aspirations and the anguishes of our people,'” he told a reporter in 2004.

By now too prominent and globally respected to be thrust aside by the apartheid government, Tutu used his appointment as secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches in 1978 to call for sanctions against his country.

He was named the first Black archbishop of Cape Town in 1986, becoming the head of the Anglican Church, South Africa’s fourth-largest. He would retain that position until 1996.

In retirement he battled prostate cancer and largely withdrew from public life. In one of his last public appearances, he hosted Britain’s Prince Harry, his wife, Meghan, and their 4-month-old son, Archie, at his charitable foundation in Cape Town in September 2019, calling them a “genuinely caring” couple.

Tutu married Leah in 1955. They had four children and several grandchildren, and homes in Cape Town and Soweto township near Johannesburg.

 
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Authorities in Burkina Faso have declared a two-day period of mourning after suspected militants killed at least 41 members of a government-backed civilian militia in the country’s desert north this week.

A column of civilian fighters from the Homeland Defense Volunteers (VDP), a group the government funds and trains to contain Islamist insurgents, was ambushed on Thursday as it swept a remote area in the northern Loroum province, authorities said Saturday.

It was one of the heaviest single-day losses the civilian militia has experienced to date and occurred one month after an attack on a gendarmerie post killed 53 people, the worst strike on Burkinabe security forces in years.

“In this painful circumstance and as a tribute to the valiant VDP and civilians who fell in defense of the homeland, the president of Burkina Faso decrees a national mourning period of forty-eight hours, starting Sunday,” government spokesperson Alkassoum Maiga said in a statement.

Authorities have faced repeated protests in recent months over their perceived failure to curb a four-year Islamist insurgency that has killed thousands across Africa’s Sahel Region and prompted more than a million people to flee their homes.

Militants linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State have inflicted heavy casualties on the region’s armies, killing soldiers in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali almost every week in scattered attacks.

The Burkinabe army said about 100 militants were killed earlier this month in a joint offensive involving hundreds of troops from Burkina Faso and Niger, who also seized guns, improvised explosive devices and hundreds of motorcycles. 
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A suicide bomber attacked a restaurant and bar Saturday as dozens of patrons gathered on Christmas Day, killing at least six others in an eastern Congolese town where Islamic extremists are known to be active. 

Heavy gunfire rang out shortly after the bomb went off, with panicked crowds fleeing the town’s center. 

Gen. Sylvain Ekenge, spokesperson for the governor of North Kivu, said that security guards had blocked the bomber from entering the crowded bar and so the person instead detonated the explosives at the entrance. 

“We call on people to remain vigilant and to avoid crowded areas during the holiday season,” he said in a statement. “In the city and territory of Beni, it is difficult, in these times to know who is who.” 

Loud noise, black smoke

Rachel Magali had been at the restaurant-bar for about three hours with her sister-in-law and several others when she heard a loud noise outside. 

“Suddenly we saw black smoke surrounding the bar and people started to cry,” she told The Associated Press. “We rushed to the exit where I saw people lying down. There were green plastic chairs scattered everywhere and I also saw heads and arms no longer attached. It was really horrible.” 

Among the dead were two children, according to Mayor Narcisse Muteba, who is also a police colonel. At least 13 other people were wounded and taken to a local hospital. 

“Investigations are underway to find the perpetrators of this terrorist attack,” he told The Associated Press. 

Rebels vex town

The town has long been targeted by rebels from the Allied Democratic Forces, a group that traces its origins to neighboring Uganda. But an Islamic State group affiliate claimed responsibility for two explosions in Beni in June, deepening fears that religious extremism has taken hold there, too. 

Those explosions included the first known suicide bombing in eastern Congo, a Ugandan man who blew himself up outside of a bar. The Islamic State group’s Central Africa Province later said that the suicide bomber was targeting Christians. The other explosion that day went off inside a Catholic church, wounding two people. 

Residents of the town have repeatedly expressed anger over the ongoing insecurity despite an army offensive and the presence of U.N. peacekeepers in Beni. In recent years, the town also has suffered through an Ebola epidemic and has seen several smaller outbreaks of the disease. 
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Clashes between two rival factions of the security forces in a port city in northeast Somalia have forced hundreds of families to flee their homes, a local official said Saturday.

The fighting has for several days rocked Bosaso, the commercial capital of the semi-autonomous state of Puntland in the country’s northeast.

“Thousands of the residents in the Bosaso town fled … as sporadic fighting was going on in some parts of the town,” local official Abdirizak Mohamed told Agence France-Presse.

“Most people decided to leave their houses after the warring sides used heavy machine guns and mortars”, mostly from two of the town’s neighborhoods, he said.

Mohamed said it was not clear exactly how many people had quit the town on the shores of the Gulf of Aden, but he estimated it was “hundreds of families.”

On Thursday, the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA had said it was “extremely concerned” about the escalation in violence that had led thousands to flee in search of safety.

“With the fighting in Bosaso town continuing … more than half of the city’s population has reportedly been displaced from their homes,” OCHA representative for Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula, said in a statement.

He added that the fighting also had uprooted families already displaced by previous unrest.

“Some 40 percent of 70,000 internally displaced persons hosted in Bosaso town are also reported to have experienced secondary displacement,” Abdelmoula said.

Located on the northernmost tip of Somalia, Puntland is one of the restive Horn of Africa country’s five semi-autonomous states.
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