Africa
Gunmen kidnap 300 students in northwest Nigeria
Rashidat Hamza is in despair. All but one of her six children are among the nearly 300 students abducted from their school in Nigeria’s northwest, riddled with Islamic extremists and armed gangs.
It has been more than two days after her children — ages 7 to 18 — went to school in the remote town of Kuriga in Kaduna state only to be kidnapped by gunmen. She was still in shock Saturday.
Authorities said at least 100 children aged 12 or younger were among the abductees in the state known for violent killings lawlessness and dangerous roads where people get regularly snatched.
“We don’t know what to do, but we believe in God,” Hamza told The Associated Press during a visit to the town.
The mass kidnapping in Kuriga was the third in northern Nigeria since last week; a group of gunmen abducted 15 children from a school in another northwestern state, Sokoto, before dawn Saturday, and a few days earlier 200 people, mostly women and children displaced by conflict, were kidnapped in northeastern Borno State.
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The kidnappings are a stark reminder of the security crisis plaguing Africa’s most populous country.
No group claimed responsibility for any of the recent abductions. But Islamic extremists waging an insurgency in the northeast are suspected of carrying out the kidnapping in Borno. Locals blame the school abductions on herders who are in conflict with the settled communities.
It's not the first time for a student kidnapping in Nigeria to shock the world. In 2014, Islamic extremists abducted more than 200 schoolgirls from Borno’s Chibok, sparking the global #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign. A decade later, at least 1,400 Nigerian students have so far been abducted from their schools in similar circumstances. Some are still held captive, including nearly 100 of the Chibok girls.
Recalling Thursday’s kidnapping, Nura Ahmad, a teacher, told the AP that students were just settling into their classrooms at the government primary and secondary school when gunmen “came in dozens, riding on bikes and shooting sporadically.”
The LEA Primary and Secondary School, one of the few educational facilities in this area, sits by the road just at the entrance of the town, tucked in the middle of forests and savannah. Even with its decaying roof and wrecked walls, it gave parents hope for a better future for their children.
“They surrounded the school and blocked all passages … and roads” to prevent help from coming before kidnapping the children in less than five minutes, Ahmad said.
Fourteen-year-old Abdullahi Usman braved gunshots to escape the captors.
“Those who refused to move fast were either forced on the motorcycles or threatened by gunshots fired into the air,” Abdullahi said. “The bandits were shouting: Go! Go! Go!” he said.
Nigerian police and soldiers headed into the forests Friday to search for the missing children, but combing the wooded expanses of northwestern Nigeria could take weeks, observers said.
“Since this happened, my brain has been muddled,” said Shehu Lawal, the father of a 13-year-old boy who is among those abducted.
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“My child didn’t even eat breakfast before leaving. His mother fainted (upon hearing the news)," he said.
Some villagers like Lawan Yaro, whose five grandchildren are among the abducted, say their hopes are already fading.
People are used to the region's insecurity, "but it has never been in this manner,” he said.
“We are crying, looking for help from the government and God, but it is the gunmen that will decide to bring the children back,” Yaro said. “God will help us."
But schools are not the only targets.
More than 3,500 people have been abducted across Nigeria in the last year, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Some were even kidnapped from their homes in the capital of Abuja. Last year, President Bola Tinubu took office after he successfully campaigned on the promise to tighten security and stop the kidnappings.
Experts say it is easy to smuggle in arms, used in kidnappings, over Nigeria’s poorly policed borders. More than half of its 1,500-kilometer (932-mile) border with Niger, for instance, stretches across the northwest. Though mostly covered in woodland savannah, the region also has vast ungoverned and unoccupied forests where organized gangs hide and keep their kidnap victims.
In 2022, lawmakers passed a bill to penalize ransom payments, but Nigerian kidnappers are known for their brutality, forcing many families to succumb to their demands.
Nigeria's military continues to conduct air raids and special military operations in the region as well as respond to pockets of crisis across the country but is fatigued by the 14-year Islamist insurgency in the northeast. Armed gangs also keep on multiplying in the region where many are poor and often work with extremists, seeking to expand their operations.
The military previously said that sometimes kidnap victims were used as “human shields” to prevent aerial bombardments of the forests where their captors hide.
The gangs are “adapting their strategies and further entrenching themselves in the northwest through extortion,” said James Barnett, a researcher specializing in West Africa at the U.S.-based Hudson Institute.
“Their mentality is that they should be allowed free rein to do what they please in the northwest and that if the state challenges them, directly or indirectly, they will have to respond and show their strength,” Barnett said.
More than a dozen checkpoints and military trucks now dot the dangerous 55-mile (89 kilometers) road running from Kuriga town to the city of Kaduna. But the soldiers are likely to be redeployed elsewhere soon, depending on security needs.
People in Kuriga can only hope their children are returned unharmed and the safety they now feel with the presence of military personnel endures.
Hamza, the mother whose five children were kidnapped, hopes the government will arrest the kidnappers and return the students. “The gunmen don’t allow us to have peace."
Algeria inaugurates Africa's largest mosque after years of political delays and cost overruns
Algeria inaugurated a gigantic mosque on its Mediterranean coastline Sunday after years of political upheaval transformed the project from a symbol of state-sponsored strength and religiosity to one of delays and cost overruns.
Built by a Chinese construction firm throughout the 2010s, the Great Mosque of Algiers features the world's tallest minaret, measuring at 869 feet (265 meters). The third largest mosque in the world and largest outside Islam's holiest cities, its prayer room accommodates 120,000 people. Its modernist design contains Arab and North African flourishes to honor Algerian tradition and culture as well as a helicopter landing pad and a library that can house up to 1 million books.
The inauguration would guide Muslims “toward goodness and moderation,” said Ali Mohamed Salabi, the General Secretary of world union of Muslim Ulemas.
Propagating a moderate brand of Islam has been a key priority in Algeria since government forces subdued an Islamist-led rebellion throughout the 1990s when a bloody civil war swept the country.
Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune inaugurated the mosque, fulfilling his promise to open it with great pomp and circumstance. The event, however, was mainly ceremonial. The mosque has been open to international tourists and state visitors to Algeria for roughly five years. An earlier ceremony was delayed.
The timing allows the mosque to officially open to the public in time to host nightly prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins next month.
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Beyond its gigantic dimensions, the mosque is also known for the delays and controversy that characterized the seven years it was under construction, including the choice of site, which experts warned was seismically risky. The state denied that in a news release Sunday posted on APS, the state news agency website. Throughout the delays and cost overruns, the project never stopped feeding Algerians’ anger, with many saying they’d rather have four hospitals built throughout the country.
The project’s official cost was $898 million.
The mosque was originally a project of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who designed it to be the largest in Africa. He wanted it to be his legacy and called “Abdelaziz Bouteflika Mosque” much like Mosque Hassan II in Casablanca, Morocco. That mosque, named after the former King of Morocco — Algeria's neighbor and regional rival — was once marketed as Africa's largest.
But the protests that swept Algeria in 2019 and led him to resign after 20 years in power prohibited Bouteflika's from realizing his plans, naming the mosque after himself or inaugurating it in February 2019 as scheduled.
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The mosque — along with a major national highway and a million new housing units — each were marred by suspicions of corruption during the Bouteflika era, with suspected kickbacks to contractors then paid to state officials.
Rape and sexual violence in Sudan's ongoing conflict may amount to war crimes, a new UN report says
The U.N. human rights office said in a new report Friday that scores of people, including children, have been subjected to rape and other forms of sexual violence in the ongoinng conflict in Sudan, assaults that may amount to war crimes.
Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April when clashes erupted in the capital, Khartoum, between rival Sudanese forces — the country’s military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and a paramilitary faction known as the Rapid Support Forces, under the command of Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
The fighting quickly spread across the African country, especially urban areas but also the restive western Darfur region, and has so far killed at least 12,000 people and sent over 8 million fleeing their homes, the report said.
The report, which covers a period from the outbreak of the fighting up to Dec. 15, documents abuses in a country that has been largely inaccessible to aid groups and rights monitors recently, clouding the impact of a conflict that been overshadowed by wars in places like Gaza and Ukraine.
The report found that at least 118 people had been subjected to sexual violence, including rape — with many of the assaults committed by members of the paramilitary forces, in homes and on the streets.
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One woman, the U.N. said, “was held in a building and repeatedly gang-raped over a period of 35 days.”
The report also pointed to recruitment of child soldiers on both sides of the conflict.
“Some of these violations would amount to war crimes,” said U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk, calling for prompt, thorough and independent investigations into alleged rights abuses and violations.
The report is based on interview of more than 300 victims and witnesses, some conducted in neighboring Ethiopia and Chad where many Sudanese have fled, along with analysis of photographs, videos, and satellite imagery from the conflict areas.
The ravages of the war, beyond the period examined, are continuing, the U.N. said.
The U.N. cited video that emerged last week from the country's North Kordofan State showing men wearing Sudanese army uniforms carrying severed heads of members of the rival paramilitary faction.
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“For nearly a year now, accounts coming out of Sudan have been of death, suffering and despair, as the senseless conflict and human rights violations and abuses have persisted with no end in sight,” Türk said.
“The guns must be silenced, and civilians must be protected,” he added.
Speaking from Nairobi, Kenya, by videoconference to the U.N. briefing in Geneva on Friday, Seif Magango, a regional spokesman for the U.N. human rights office said that “the number of people displaced (in Sudan) has now crossed the 8 million mark, which should concern everyone.”
Earlier in February, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters that there is no military solution to Sudan's conflict and urged the rival generals to start talking about ending the conflict. He stressed that continued fighting “will not bring any solution so we must stop this as soon as possible.”
Nigeria’s currency has fallen to a record low as inflation surges
Nigerians are facing one of the West African nation’s worst economic crises in years triggered by surging inflation, the result of monetary policies that have pushed the currency to an all-time low against the dollar. The situation has provoked anger and protests across the country.
The latest government statistics released Thursday showed the inflation rate in January rose to 29.9%, its highest since 1996, mainly driven by food and non-alcoholic beverages. Nigeria's currency, the naira, further plummeted to 1,524 to $1 on Friday, reflecting a 230% loss of value in the last year.
“My family is now living one day at a time (and) trusting God,” said trader Idris Ahmed, whose sales at a clothing store in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja have declined from an average of $46 daily to $16.
The plummeting currency worsens an already bad situation, further eroding incomes and savings. It squeezes millions of Nigerians already struggling with hardship due to government reforms including the removal of gas subsidies that resulted in gas prices tripling.
A SNAPSHOT OF NIGERIA’S ECONOMYWith a population of more than 210 million people, Nigeria is not just Africa’s most populous country but also the continent’s largest economy. Its gross domestic product is driven mainly by services such as information technology and banking, followed by manufacturing and processing businesses and then agriculture.
Read: 37 people killed in disputed oil-rich African region of Abyei in fighting linked to spiritual leader
The challenge is that the economy is far from sufficient for Nigeria’s booming population, relying heavily on imports to meet the daily needs of its citizens from cars to cutlery. So it is easily affected by external shocks such as the parallel foreign exchange market that determines the price of goods and services.
Nigeria's economy is heavily dependent on crude oil, its largest foreign exchange earner. When crude prices plunged in 2014, authorities used its scarce foreign reserves to try to stabilize the naira amid multiple exchange rates. The government also shut down the land borders to encourage local production and limited access to the dollar for importers of certain items.
The measures, however, further destabilized the naira by facilitating a booming parallel market for the dollar. Crude oil sales that boost foreign exchange earnings have also dropped because of chronic theft and pipeline vandalism.
MONETARY REFORMS POORLY IMPLEMENTEDShortly after taking the reins of power in May last year, President Bola Tinubu took bold steps to fix the ailing economy and attract investors. He announced the end of costly decadeslong gas subsidies, which the government said were no longer sustainable. Meanwhile, the country's multiple exchange rates were unified to allow market forces to determine the rate of the local naira against the dollar, which in effect devalued the currency.
Analysts say there were no adequate measures to contain the shocks that were bound to come as a result of reforms including the provision of a subsidized transportation system and an immediate increase in wages.
So the more than 200% increase in gas prices caused by the end of the gas subsidy started to have a knock-on effect on everything else, especially because locals rely heavily on gas-powered generators to light their households and run their businesses.
WHY IS THE NAIRA PLUMMETING IN VALUE?Under the previous leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria, policymakers tightly controlled the rate of the naira against the dollar, thereby forcing individuals and businesses in need of dollars to head to the black market, where the currency was trading at a much lower rate.
There was also a huge backlog of accumulated foreign exchange demand on the official market — estimated to be $7 billion — due in part to limited dollar flows as foreign investments into Nigeria and the country’s sale of crude oil have declined.
Authorities said a unified exchange rate would mean easier access to the dollar, thereby encouraging foreign investors and stabilizing the naira. But that has yet to happen because inflows have been poor. Instead, the naira has further weakened as it continues to depreciate against the dollar.
Read: 52 killed in clashes in the disputed oil-rich African region of Abyei
WHAT ARE AUTHORITIES DOING?CBN Gov. Olayemi Cardoso has said the bank has cleared $2.5 billion of the foreign exchange backlog out of the $7 billion that had been outstanding. The bank, however, found that $2.4 billion of that backlog were false claims that it would not clear, Cardoso said, leaving a balance of about $2.2 billion, which he said will be cleared “soon.”
Tinubu, meanwhile, has directed the release of food items such as cereals from government reserves among other palliatives to help cushion the effect of the hardship. The government has also said it plans to set up a commodity board to help regulate the soaring prices of goods and services.
On Thursday, the Nigerian leader met with state governors to deliberate on the economic crisis, part of which he blamed on the large-scale hoarding of food in some warehouses.
"We must ensure that speculators, hoarders and rent seekers are not allowed to sabotage our efforts in ensuring the wide availability of food to all Nigerians,” Tinubu said.
By Friday morning, local media were reporting that stores were being sealed for hoarding and charging unfair prices.
HOW ARE NIGERIANS COPING WITH TOUGH TIMES?The situation is at its worst in conflict zones in northern Nigeria, where farming communities are no longer able to cultivate what they eat as they are forced to flee violence. Pockets of protests have broken out in past weeks but security forces have been quick to impede them, even making arrests in some cases.
In the economic hub of Lagos and other major cities, there are fewer cars and more legs on the roads as commuters are forced to trek to work. The prices of everything from food to household items increase daily.
“Even to eat now is a problem,” said Ahmed in Abuja. “But what can we do?”
37 people killed in disputed oil-rich African region of Abyei in fighting linked to spiritual leader
Thirty-seven people were killed over the weekend in fighting apparently tied to a land feud in the disputed oil-rich region of Abyei, an official said Sunday. The bloodshed came a week after 52 people died in a land dispute in the same region.
Information Minister Bolis Koch in Abyei, which is claimed by South Sudan and Sudan, said the fighting erupted in Rum-Ameer, Alal and Mijak counties with an attack by armed youth from South Sudan's Warrap state who were backed by fighters loyal to spiritual leader Gai Machiek from the country's Unity state.
Koch said the fighting left 19 people dead and 18 injured Saturday and claimed the lives of 18 more people Sunday, including four women and three children. He said 1,000 head of cattle also were stolen.
“The Abyei Special Administrative Area strongly condemns the terrorist attacks, the heinous killings of innocent civilians, the burning of local markets and residential areas,” Koch said in a statement.
Ethnic violence has been common in the region, where Twic Dinka tribal members from Warrap are contesting for land with Ngok Dinka people in Abyei's Aneet area, located at the border.
Although land is seen as the major driver of the conflict, officials allege the armed Twic young people are being incited by Machiek, an ethnic Neur spiritual leader who has been accused of formenting conflict. He also was blamed for the attack a week ago that killed 53 people, including two U.N. peacekeepers.
Machiek has denied any wrongdoing in interviews with local media.
Sudan and South Sudan have disagreed over control of the Abyei region since a 2005 peace deal ended decades of civil war between Sudan’s north and south. Abyei's status was unresolved after South Sudan became independent from Sudan in 2011, though it is under control of South Sudan.
The region’s majority Ngok Dinka people favor South Sudan, while the Misseriya nomads who come to Abyei to find pasture for their cattle favor Sudan. An African Union panel proposed a referendum for Abyei but there was disagreement over who could vote.
Pakistan's former premier Imran Khan and wife convicted of marriage law violation in a fourth case
A Pakistani court on Saturday convicted and sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife to seven years in prison on a charge that their 2018 marriage violated the law, officials and a lawyer said.
The latest verdict follows another case in which Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were sentenced to 14 years in prison on Wednesday for corruption. It comes ahead of Feb. 8 parliamentary elections in which Khan has already been disqualified because of graft convictions while his party is struggling to run an election campaign.
It was Khan’s fourth conviction since 2022, when he was ousted from power. His sentences total 34 years and will be served concurrently.
Analysts say Khan’s multiple and apparently hasty convictions are seen by his party and supporters as punishment for his rhetoric against Pakistan’s powerful military leadership, which has ruled the country for half of its 76-year history. During his final months in power, Khan had broadened his fight with opponents to include the military.
The lawyer for the couple, Intisar Panjutha, said the verdict was announced by Judge Qudrat Ullah a day after the trial ended. Khan and his family insist the trial is politically motivated.
The prosecution said Khan and his wife violated the law that a woman must wait three months before marrying again.
Bibi, Khan’s third wife, was a spiritual healer who was previously married to a man who claimed that they divorced in November 2017, less than three months before she married Khan. Bibi has said they divorced in August 2017.
She and Khan, who had been married twice before, denied they violated the three-month waiting period — a requirement of Islamic law and upheld by Pakistan.
The ruling was condemned by Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. Its head, Gohar Khan, told reporters that Khan will appeal. “This is a bogus case against Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi, but still they were given maximum prison sentence by the court," he said.
The couple were also fined 500,000 rupees ($1,800) each.
Khan is currently serving multiple prison terms at Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, where his trials were held because of security concerns.
He is embroiled in more than 150 legal cases, including inciting people to violence after his arrest in May 2023. During nationwide riots in May, Khan’s supporters attacked the military headquarters in Rawalpindi, stormed an air base in Mianwali in the eastern Punjab province and torched a building housing state-run Radio Pakistan in the northwest.
The violence subsided only when Khan was released at the time by the Supreme Court.
Khan and Bibi also face another graft case, allegedly involving giving undue benefits to a property tycoon in return for establishing an Islamic university.
52 killed in clashes in the disputed oil-rich African region of Abyei
Gunmen attacked villagers in the oil-rich region of Abyei claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan, leaving at least 52 people dead, including a U.N. peacekeeper, and 64 wounded, a regional official said Sunday.
The motive for the attack Saturday evening was not immediately clear but it was suspected to revolve around a land dispute, Bulis Koch, Abyei information minister, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Abyei.
Deadly ethnic violence has been common in the region, where Twic Dinka tribal members from neighboring Warrap State are locked in a land dispute with Ngok Dinka from Abyei over the Aneet area, located at the border.
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The attackers in Saturday’s violence were armed youth from the Nuer tribe who migrated to Warrap state last year because of flooding in their areas, Koch said.
In a statement, the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) condemned the violence that killed the peacekeeper.
UNIFSA confirmed intercommunal clashes took place in the Nyinkuac, Majbong and Khadian areas leading to casualties and the evacuation of civilians to UNISFA bases.
“The UNISFA base in Agok came under attack by an armed group. The mission repelled the attack, but tragically a Ghanaian peacekeeper was killed,” the statement said.
Sudan and South Sudan have disagreed over control of the Abyei region since a 2005 peace deal ended decades of civil war between Sudan’s north and south. Both Sudan and South Sudan claim ownership of Abyei, whose status was unresolved after South Sudan became independent from Sudan in 2011.
The region’s majority Ngok Dinka people favor South Sudan, while the Misseriya nomads who come to Abyei to find pasture for their cattle favor Sudan. Currently, the region is under the control of South Sudan.
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An African Union panel proposed a referendum for Abyei but there was disagreement over who could vote. Currently, the region is under the control of South Sudan.
Inter-communal and cross-border clashes have escalated since South Sudan deployed its troops to Abyei in March.
Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros votes for president in Africa's first election of 2024
The Indian Ocean island nation of Comoros voted Sunday for president in Africa's first national election of 2024.
Incumbent President Azali Assoumani, a former military officer, is expected to win a fourth term despite criticism he has become increasingly authoritarian and cracked down on his opponents.
Five opposition candidates stood against Assoumani while other opposition parties have called for a boycott, accusing the national electoral commission of bias. The commission denied the accusations. Provisional results are expected on Friday.
The country of around 800,000 people off East Africa has experienced a series of coups since it gained independence from France in 1975. The first coup came just a month after independence.
Assoumani, 65, took charge himself in a coup in 1999, and was first elected president in 2002. He stepped down after one term but returned to reclaim the presidency in an election in 2016, and was reelected in 2019. Presidential terms are for five years.
Assoumani succeeded in side-stepping term limits by changing the constitution in 2018. Previously, the presidency was rotated after a single term between Comoros' three main islands of Grand Comore, Anjouan, and Moheli.
The move to change the constitution caused mass protests against Assoumani and an armed uprising by rebels on the island of Anjouan, which the army quelled after days of fighting. Protests have been regularly banned since then.
Former President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi, a political rival of Assoumani, was sentenced to life in prison in 2022 on charges of high treason over the forgery and illegal selling of Comoros passports.
The Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a research institution within the U.S. Department of Defense that's funded by Congress, said Assoumani’s latest presidential term has been “marked by crackdowns on dissent.”
It noted curtailments on press freedom and opposition leaders being threatened and detained by police and the army.
Assoumani is coming to the end of a one-year term as chairperson of the African Union, a largely ceremonial role that moves around the continent.
Sunday's election in Comoros will be notable for France because of its island territory of Mayotte, which lies about 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the southeast. Mayotte has seen an influx of immigrants from Comoros.
Comoros is one of over 50 countries that go to the polls in 2024 to test democracy across the globe.
Riots in Papua New Guinea's 2 biggest cities reportedly leave 15 dead
The Papua New Guinea government worked to restore order Thursday after at least 15 people were reportedly killed during rioting and looting that left the country’s two biggest cities in flames.
The unrest began in the capital, Port Moresby, on Wednesday after hundreds of police officers, soldiers, prison staff and public servants walked off their jobs in protest over a pay dispute.
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The Papua New Guinea government attributed the pay cut to an administrative glitch.
Similar riots also caused damage in Lae, the second-biggest city in the southwestern Pacific country. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that at least 15 people died in Port Moresby and Lae.
An additional 180 defense personnel flew into Port Moresby on Thursday.
Tensions in the country have risen amid high unemployment and increased living costs.
Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said Port Moresby was “under stress and duress” but that violence had eased.
“Police were not at work yesterday in the city and people resorted to lawlessness — not all people, but in certain segments of our city,” Marape said in a news conference on Thursday. ”(The) situation report as of this morning shows tension in the city has subsided.”
Many shops and banking services were closed Thursday as business owners repaired damage.
Papua New Guinea is a diverse, developing nation of mostly subsistence farmers where some 800 languages are spoken. It is in a strategically important part of the South Pacific. With 10 million people, it the most populous South Pacific nation after Australia, which is home to 26 million.
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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appealed for calm. He said his government had not received any requests for help from its closest neighbor.
Papua New Guinea and Australia last month signed a bilateral security pact.
“Our high commission in Port Moresby are keeping a very close eye on what is occurring there, making sure Australians are looked after,” Albanese told reporters Thursday.
Papua New Guinea struggles to contain escalating tribal violence and civil unrest in remote regions and has a long-term aim to increase its police numbers from 6,000 officers to 26,000.
160 killed in central Nigeria attacks
At least 160 people have been killed in central Nigeria in a series of attacks on villages, local authorities said Monday.
It marks a sharp rise from the initial figure of 16 deaths in a clash between herders and farmers in Mushu, a village in the Bokkos local government area.
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At least 113 people have been confirmed killed and more than 300 wounded people were transferred to hospitals in Bokkos, Jos, and Barkin Ladi, Monday Kassah, head of the local government in Bokkos, Plateau State, was quoted by AFP as saying.
A provisional toll by the local Red Cross reported 104 deaths in 18 villages in the Bokkos region.
At least 50 people were also reported dead in several villages in the Barkin Ladi area, according to Dickson Chollom, a member of the state parliament.
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It is the worst outbreak of violence in Plateau since May when more than 100 were killed in farmer-herder clashes.
Armed attacks have been a major security threat in Nigeria's northern and central regions, leading to deaths and kidnappings.