United News of Bangladesh

The death toll from flash floods and landslides in eastern Congo has risen to 176, with some 100 people still missing, according to a provisional assessment given by the governor and authorities in the country's South Kivu province. Rivers broke their banks in villages in the territory of Kalehe close to the shores of Lake Kivu. Authorities also reported scores of people injured. South Kivu Gov. Théo Ngwabidje visited the area to see the destruction for himself, and posted on his Twitter account that the provincial government had dispatched medical, shelter and food supplies. Several main roads to the affected area have been been made impassable by the rains, hampering the relief efforts. President Felix Tshisekedi has declared a national day of mourning on Monday to honor the victims, and the central government is sending a crisis management team to South Kivu to support the provincial government. Heavy rains in recent days have brought misery to thousands in East Africa, with parts of Uganda and Kenya also seeing heavy rainfall. Flooding and landslides in Rwanda, which borders Congo, left 129 people dead earlier this week.  

Senior South Korean and Japanese officials on Wednesday discussed strengthening relations and coordinating responses to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats in a meeting in Seoul ahead of a summit between the countries’ leaders. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will host on Sunday Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in their second summit since March. The two U.S. allies have been working to repair relations strained by historical grievances and tighten security cooperation to cope with North Korean nuclear threats. The talks between South Korean National Security Adviser Cho Tae-yong and his Japanese counterpart, Takeo Akiba, were focused on the trilateral security cooperation with Washington and encouraging further global efforts to stem North Korean attempts to evade U.N. Security Council sanctions to fund its nuclear arms program. Cho and Akiba also discussed facilitating the economic and cultural exchanges and aligning their broader strategies for the Indo-Pacific region, according to Yoon's office. They later participated in a broader meeting with economic and security officials that discussed issues related to supply chain resiliency, climate change and emerging technologies, Yoon’s office said. The summit on Sunday follows Yoon’s state visit to Washington last week where he and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed to strengthen nuclear deterrence to prevent North Korean aggression. Yoon, Biden and Kishida are also planning to hold a trilateral summit next month at the Group of Seven meetings in Hiroshima, where North Korea is expected to be among the major topics along with Russia’s war on Ukraine and China’s assertive foreign policy. North Korea has test-fired around 100 missiles since the start of 2022 as it continues to use the United States’ expanding military exercises with South Korea and Japan as a pretext to accelerate its weapons development. The weapons North Korea tested this year include intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland and shorter-range weapons potentially targeting South Korea and Japan. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has punctuated the tests with threats to preemptively use his nuclear weapons in a broad range of scenarios where the North may perceive its leadership as under threat. North Korea’s intensified testing activity and threats of nuclear conflict have pulled Seoul and Tokyo closer together following years of bickering over history. During the summit in Tokyo in March, Yoon and Kishida vowed to rebuild their security and economic relations that had declined over disputes linked to Japan’s brutal rule of the Korean Peninsula before the end of World War II. The meeting, which was the first formal summit hosted by Japan since 2011, came after Yoon’s government took a major step toward improving ties by announcing plans to use South Korean funds to compensate Koreans who were enslaved by Japanese companies during the colonial period. The plan, which doesn’t require Japanese contributions, aims to end a row stemming from South Korean court rulings in 2018 that ordered Japanese companies to offer reparations to the forced laborers. Those rulings irked Japan, which insists all compensation issues were settled by a 1965 treaty that normalized relations. Yoon’s push to mend ties with Tokyo has triggered criticism from some forced labor victims and his political rivals, who demand direct Japanese compensation. But Yoon has defended his moves, saying closer ties with Japan are critical for dealing with a slew of regional challenges, especially North Korea. Japan’s Trade Ministry said last week that it started procedures to restore preferential trade status for South Korea, days after Seoul took a similar step for Tokyo and requested reciprocity. The countries in 2019 had downgraded each other’s trade status amid an erosion of ties caused by the forced labor rulings.

Exhausted Sudanese and foreigners joined growing crowds at Sudan's main seaport Tuesday, waiting to be evacuated from the chaos-stricken nation. After more than two weeks of fighting, areas of the capital of Khartoum appear increasingly abandoned. The battle for control of Sudan erupted on April 15, after months of escalating tensions between the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and a rival paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. Other nations have tried to convince the two generals to stop the fighting and come to the negotiating table. The government of South Sudan, which officially split from Sudan in 2011, said Tuesday that the two rival generals have agreed in “principle” on a weeklong cease-fire starting on Thursday, and on engaging in peace talks. The statement did not elaborate on the possible venue or timing for the talks. Also Read: Sudan evacuees to return home within 72 hours of landing in KSA: Riyadh Embassy South Sudan President Salva Kiir spoke with both Burhan and Dagalo over the phone, the government said in a statement. There was no immediate comment from either the army or the paramilitary. Meanwhile, civilians were packing buses and trucks for Sudan’s northern border with Egypt. Many others headed to Port Sudan, on the country's Red Sea coast. The relative calm of the port city, from which many foreign governments have evacuated their citizens, seemed the safer option. “Much of the capital has become empty,” said Abdalla al-Fatih, a Khartoum resident who fled with his family to Port Sudan on Monday. He said they had been trapped for two weeks, and that by now, everyone on his street had left. When they arrived in Port Sudan after a 20-hour journey, they found thousands, including many women and children, camping outside the port area. Many had been in the open air for more than a week, with no food or basic services in the sweltering heat. Others crowded into mosques or hotels inside the city. Tariq Abdel-Hameed was one of around 2,000 Syrians in Port Sudan hoping to get out by sea or air. Some 200 Syrians have been evacuated since the crisis began, including 35 on Friday on a vessel bound for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The first Damascus-bound flight was scheduled to take off later Tuesday, Abdel-Hameed said, with about 200 on board, mostly pregnant women and sick people. At the congested crossing points with Egypt, thousands of families have waited for days inside buses or sought temporary shelter in the border town of Wadi Halfa. Yusuf Abdel-Rahman, a Sudanese university student, said he and his family entered Egypt through the Ashkit border crossing late Monday. They had first gone to another crossing point, Arqin, but said it was too crowded to make the attempt. Families with children and the sick were stranded in the desert landscape with no food and water, waiting for visas which are mandatory for Sudanese men to enter Egypt, he recounted. In Khartoum, Abdel-Rahman said he had seen widespread destruction and looting. He knows many people whose homes have been commandeered by the paramilitary forces and thinks they are lucky to have left before their home was stormed. “We could have ended up dead bodies," he said. The fighting has displaced at least 334,000 people inside Sudan, and sent tens of thousands more to neighboring countries — Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia, according to U.N. agencies. Aid workers are increasingly concerned about lack of basic services in these areas. Between 900 and 1,000 people arrive daily at the border with Ethiopia, Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration, said at a news briefing Tuesday in Geneva. At least 20,000 people crossed into Chad, which borders the Darfur city of Genena where clashes last week killed dozens and wounded hundreds. Aleksandra Roulet-Cimpric, the Chad Country Director with the International Rescue Committee, described dire conditions for the arrivals there, many of them women and children who have no choice but to seek shelter from the heat under sparse trees. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned that the number of people fleeing to neighboring countries could surpass 800,000. Early Tuesday, the sounds of explosions and gunfire echoed though many parts of Khartoum, with fierce clashes taking place around the military’s headquarters, the international airport and the Republican Palace, residents said. Warplanes were seen flying overhead, they said. The fighting continued despite the newest extension of a shaky cease-fire, meant to allow safe corridors for healthcare workers and aid agencies working in the capital. “The war never stopped,” said Atiya Abdalla Atiya, Secretary of the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate. Morgues across the capital are filled with bodies and people are still unable to collect the dead for burial, he said. At least 447 civilians have been killed and more than 2,255 wounded since the fighting began, according to figures provided Tuesday by the Doctors’ Syndicate, which tracks civilian casualties. The Sudanese Health Ministry said it counted at least 550 people killed, including civilians and combatants, with more than 4,900 wounded as of Monday. In addition to the South Sudanese proposal, there has been other suggestions aimed at stopping the violence and avoiding a worsening humanitarian disaster. Both sides agreed to send representatives for talks that would potentially be held in Saudi Arabia, according the U.N. envoy in Sudan, Volker Perthes. The kingdom has joined the United States in pressing for a lasting cease-fire. Another proposal, put forward by Sudan's former Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, who met this week with regional leaders and Western diplomats in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, set forward a series of five steps to help the two sides reconcile. “This war can lead to a global emergency unless halted immediately," he said. The power struggle has derailed Sudan’s efforts to restore its democratic transition, which was halted in Oct. 2021 when Burhan and Dagalo, then allies, removed Hamdok's Western-backed transitional government in a coup.

The United Nations food relief agency has suspended aid deliveries to Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region amid an internal investigation into the theft of food meant for hungry people, according to four humanitarian workers. The World Food Program is responsible for delivering food from the U.N. and other partners to Tigray, the center of a devastating two-year civil war that ended with a ceasefire in November. More than 5 million of the region’s 6 million people rely on aid. WFP informed its humanitarian partners on April 20 that it was temporarily suspending deliveries of food to Tigray amid reports of food misappropriation, one of the four humanitarian workers told AP. Three other aid workers confirmed this information. They all insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to a journalist on this matter. Last month, AP reported that the WFP was investigating cases of food misappropriation and diversion in Ethiopia, where a total of 20 million people need humanitarian help due to drought and conflict A letter sent by the WFP’s Ethiopia director on April 5 asked humanitarian partners to share “any information or cases of food misuse, misappropriation or diversion that you are aware of or that are brought to your attention by your staff, beneficiaries or local authorities.” At the time, two aid workers told AP that the stolen supplies included enough food to feed 100,000 people. The food was discovered missing from a warehouse in the Tigray city of Sheraro. It was not clear who was responsible for the theft. Tigray’s new interim president, Getachew Reda, said last month he discussed “the growing challenge of diversion & sale of food aid meant for the needy” with senior WFP officials during a visit by the agency to Mekele, the regional capital. A spokesperson for the WFP in Ethiopia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sudan’s warring generals have agreed to send representatives for negotiations, potentially in Saudi Arabia, the United Nations’ top official in the country told The Associated Press on Monday, even as the two sides clashed in the capital despite another three-day extension of a fragile cease-fire. If the talks come together, they would initially focus on establishing a “stable and reliable” cease-fire monitored by national and international observers, Volker Perthes said, but he warned there were still challenges in holding the negotiations. A string of temporary truces over the past week has eased fighting only in some areas, but in others fierce battles have continued to drive civilians from their homes and push the country into disaster. Humanitarian groups have been trying to restore the flow of help to a country where nearly a third of the population of 46 million relied on international aid even before the explosion of violence. The U.N. food agency on Monday said it was ending the temporary suspension of its operations in Sudan, put in place after three of its team members were killed in the war-wrecked Darfur region early in the fighting. The World Food Program will resume food distribution in four provinces — al-Qadaref, Gezira, Kassala and White Nile — working in areas where security permits, said Executive Director Cindy McCain said in a statement. The numbers of those in need of help will “grow significantly as fighting continues,” she said. “To best protect our necessary humanitarian workers and the people of Sudan, the fighting must stop.” A day earlier, the International Committee of the Red Cross flew in a planeload of medical supplies to bring some relief to hospitals overwhelmed by the mayhem. The United States, conducted its first evacuation of American civilians from Sudan. Watched over by U.S. military drones, a group of Americans made the perilous journey by road from the capital, Khartoum, to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan. On Monday, a U.S. Navy fast transport ship took 308 evacuees from Port Sudan to the Saudi port of Jeddah, according to Saudi officials. Direct talks, if they take place, would be the first major sign of progress since fighting erupted on April 15 between the army and a rival paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces. For much of the conflict, army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo have appeared determined to fight to the end. Their struggle for power has put millions of Sudanese in the middle of gun battles, artillery bombardments and airstrikes. Around 530 people, including civilians and combatants, have been killed in the conflict, with another 4,500 wounded, the Sudanese Health Ministry said. Tens of thousands have fled Khartoum and other cities, and more than two-thirds of hospitals in areas with active fighting are out of service, with fighters looting the dwindling supplies. Explosions and gunfire echoed in parts of Khartoum and its neighboring city, Omdurman, on Monday, residents said, hours after the two sides committed to the 72-hour cease-fire extension. Atiya Abdalla Atiya, Secretary of the Doctors’ Syndicate, said the fighting has raged early Monday in different areas in the capital, including the military’s headquarters, the Republican Palace, and the international airport. There were also clashes in the upscale neighborhood of Kafouri, he said. Many hospitals in the capital remained out of service or inaccessible because of the fighting, while others have been occupied by the warring factions, particularly the RSF, he said. The United States and Saudi Arabia have led an international push to get the generals to stop fighting, then engage in deeper negotiations to resolve the crisis. Speaking from Port Sudan, the U.N. envoy Perthes said they still face daunting challenges in getting the two sides to abide by a real halt in fighting where violations are prevented. One possibility was to establish a monitoring mechanism that includes Sudanese and foreign observers, “but that has to be negotiated,” he said. Talks on entrenching the cease-fire could take place in either Saudi Arabia or South Sudan, he said, adding that the former may be easier logistically since it has close ties to both sides. But even talks in Saudi Arabia has challenges, he said, since each side needs safe passage through territory of the other to reach talks. “That is very difficult in a situation where there is a lack of trust,” he said. The eruption of fighting capped months of worsening disputes between Burhan and Dagalo as the international community tried to work out a deal for establishing civilian rule. “We all saw the enormous tensions,” Perthes said. “But very concretely, we have to say that our efforts to de-escalate did not succeed.” He said he had been warning repeatedly that “any single spark” could cause the power struggle to explode. Perthes warned of a “major humanitarian crisis” as people were running out of food and fresh water in Khartoum and fighting damaged water systems. A real cease-fire is vital to getting access to residents who are trapped in their homes or injured, he said. “If we don’t get a stable cease fire, then it means that the humanitarian situation will be even worse.” He also warned the fighting could pull in other armed factions in a country where multiple groups have fought several civil wars over the past decade. “And that could transform into a broader confrontation between different groups and communities and militias in the country,” he said.

Gunfire and heavy artillery fire persisted Saturday in parts of Sudan’s capital Khartoum, residents said, despite the extension of a cease-fire between the country’s two top generals, whose battle for power has killed hundreds and sent thousands fleeing for their lives. The civilian death toll jumped Saturday to 411 people, according to the Sudan Doctors' Syndicate, which monitors casualties. The fighting has wounded another 2,023 civilians so far, the group added. In the city of Genena, the provincial capital of war-ravaged West Darfur, intensified violence has killed 89 people. Fighters have moved into homes and taken over stores and hospitals as they battle in the densely populated streets, the syndicate said. Khartoum, a city of some 5 million people, has been transformed into a front line in the grinding conflict between Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, the commander of Sudan’s military, and Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, which has dashed once-euphoric hopes of Sudan's democratic transition. Foreign countries continued to evacuate diplomatic staff and nationals while thousands of Sudanese fled across borders. Britain said it was ending its evacuation flights Saturday, after demand for spots on the planes had declined. Over 50,000 refugees — mostly women and children — have crossed over the western border to Chad, Egypt, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, the United Nations said, raising fears of wider instability. Ethnic fighting and turmoil has scarred South Sudan and the Central African Republic while Chad's own democratic transition has stalled after a coup. Those who escape Khartoum face more obstacles on their way to safety. The overland journey to Port Sudan, where ships then evacuate people via the Red Sea, has proven long and risky. Hatim el-Madani, a former journalist, said that paramilitary fighters were refugees at roadblocks out of the capital, demanding they hand over their phones and valuables. stopping “There's an outlaw, bandit-like nature to the RSF militia,” he said, referring to the Rapid Support Forces. “It indicates they don't have a supply line in place and that could get worse in the coming days.” Airlifts from the country have also posed challenges, with a Turkish evacuation plane hit by gunfire outside Khartoum on Friday. On Saturday — despite a cease-fire extended under heavy international pressure by 72 hours early Friday — clashes continued around the presidential palace, headquarters of the state broadcaster and a military base in Khartoum, residents said. The battles sent thick columns of black smoke billowing over the city skyline. In a few areas near the capital, including in Omdurman, residents reported that some shops were reopening as the scale of fighting dwindled amid the tenuous cease-fire. But in other areas, residents sheltering at home as explosions thundered around them said fighters were going from house to house, terrifying people and stealing whatever they could find. Now in its third week, the fighting has left swaths of Khartoum without electricity and running water. The Sudanese Health Ministry put the latest overall death toll at 528, with 4,500 wounded. Those sheltering at home say they're running out of food and basic supplies. Residents on Saturday in the city of Omdurman, west of Khartoum, said they'd been waiting three days to get fuel — complicating their escape plans. The U.N. relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said that U.N. offices in Khartoum, as well as the cities of Genena and Nyala in Darfur had been attacked and looted. “This is unacceptable — and prohibited under international law,” he said. Genena's main hospital was also leveled in the fighting, said Sudan’s health ministry. Over the past 15 days of pummeling each other, the generals have each failed to deal a decisive blow to the other in their struggle for control of Africa’s third largest nation. The military has appeared to have the upper hand in the fighting, with its monopoly on air power, but it has been impossible to confirm its claims of advances. "Soon, the Sudanese state with its well-grounded institutions will rise as victorious, and attempts to hijack our country will be aborted forever,” the Sudanese military said Saturday. Both sides in the conflict have a long history of human rights abuses. The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias, which were accused of widespread atrocities when the government deployed them to put down a rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the early 2000s. A unit of Sudan's armed forces, known as the Central Reserve Police, have also been sanctioned by the U.S. for grave human rights violations against Sudan’s pro-democracy protesters. Accusations of rape, torture and other abuses against demonstrators carried out by the unit first surfaced in 2021, after Burhan and Dagalo joined forces in a military coup that ousted a civilian government. The Sudanese Interior Ministry confirmed the deployment of the widely criticized Central Reserve Police in Khartoum on Saturday, posting photos of the fighters riding with heavy machine guns mounted on pickup trucks. Former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who was ousted in the 2021 coup, appealed to the international community from a conference in Nairobi, Kenya, to push for an immediate halt to the conflict. He warned that a full-blown civil war in the strategically located country would have consequences not just in Sudan but for the world. “God forbid if Sudan is to reach a proper civil war ... it is a huge country and very diverse ... it would be a nightmare for the world,” he said. But the generals have so far rejected attempts at a compromise, and regional mediators have been unable to travel to Khartoum because of the chaotic fighting. Still, African Union Chairperson Moussa Faki said he would help initiate a “Sudanese-led” political process and try to send peacekeepers to the country. “I’m ready myself to go there, even by road," Faki said. “We ask the two generals to create the conditions for us to go to Khartoum.”

Heavy explosions and gunfire rocked Sudan’s capital, Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman early Friday, residents said, despite the extension of a fragile truce between the county’s two top generals whose power struggle has killed hundreds. Turkey also said one of its evacuation aircrafts was hit Friday by gunfire outside Khartoum with no causalities. The escalation came hours after both sides accepted a 72-hour extension of the truce, apparently to allow foreign governments complete the evacuation of their citizens from the chaos-stricken African nation. Multiple short truces have not stopped the fighting, but they created enough of a lull for tens of thousands of Sudanese to flee to safer areas and for foreign nations to evacuate thousands of their citizens by land, air and sea. Residents reported fierce clashes in Khartoum’s upscale neighborhood of Kafouri, where the military earlier had used warplanes to bomb its rivals, the Rapid Support Forces, in the area.Clashes were also reported around the military’s headquarters, the Republican Palace and the area close to the Khartoum international airport. All these areas are flashpoints since the war between the military and the RSF erupted on April 15. “Heavy explosions and constant gunfire are heard across Kafouri streets,” said Abdalla, a Kafouri resident who asked to be identified only by his first name for his safety. In Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, a protest group reported “constant explosions” in the district of Karari early Friday. It called residents in the area to remain vigilant. The RSF has claimed that the army’s aircraft bombed its positions in Omdurman and Jabal Awliya, south of Khartoum. The military, meanwhile, accused the paramilitary force of beginning the attack. It was not possible to verify either claim. The Turkish Defense Ministry said “light weapons were fired” at a C-130 aircraft heading to Wadi Sayidna airbase, about 22 kilometers (14 miles) north of Khartoum, to evacuate Turkish civilians. The plane landed safely, the ministry said in a tweet, and no personnel were injured. The Sudanese military blamed the RSF for firing at the Turkish aircraft, a claim the paramilitary force denied. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the French military evacuated dozens of employees with the U.N. and other international aid agencies Thursday night from al-Fasher, a city in Sudan’s western Darfur region, to Chad’s capital, N’Djamena, according to U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric. U.N. envoy Volker Perthes remained in Sudan along with a “small” U.N. team, according to the U.N. mission in the African country. The power struggle between the Sudanese military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, led by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has dealt a harsh blow to Sudan’s hopes for a democratic transition. The rival generals came to power after a pro-democracy uprising led to the ouster of the former strongman Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. In 2021, the generals joined forces to seize power in a coup that ousted a western-backed join military-civilian administration. The fighting has further plunged the country, especially its capital, into chaos, with tens of thousands seeking safety elsewhere. Many headed to the northern borders with Egypt, or to the city of Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Those who remain in the capital have been living in rapidly deteriorating conditions, mostly trapped inside their homes for days amid the clashes. Food, water and other services have become scarce, and electricity is cut off across much of Khartoum and other cities. The health care system is near to collapse with dozens of hospitals became out of service because of attacks, lack of staff or power. Multiple aid agencies have had to suspend operations and evacuated most if its employees out of the country. At least 512 people, including civilians and combatants, have been killed in Sudan since April 15, with another 4,200 wounded, according to the Sudanese Health Ministry. The Doctors’ Syndicate, which tracks civilian casualties, has recorded at least 303 civilians killed and 1,848 wounded. The fighting also resulted in widespread looting and destruction in the capital and elsewhere across the county. Major open-air markets, businesses and houses were stormed and looted by groups of armed men, with many blamed elements of the RSF. The Umma Party, the largest political entity in Sudan, meanwhile said in a statement that RSF elements stormed the house of the party's leader, Mubarak al-Fadel in Amarat, one of Khartoum’s most prestigious neighborhoods. The party said al-Fadel and his family were not at home when the storming took place on April 21, the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The party said the paramilitary force damaged the house and looted the family’s gold before leaving the second day. There was no comment from the RSF, but the paramilitary force has repeatedly sought to distance itself from looting and robbery, saying they were armed men disguised in RSF uniforms. In the Darfur city of Genena, the situation remained volatile Friday, a day after armed fighters rampaged through the city, battling each other, killing dozens and looting shops and homes. “The fighting stopped but the situation is shaky,” said Dr. Salah Tour, a board member of the Doctors’ Syndicate in the West Darfur province, of which Genena is the capital. He said residents took advantage of the relative clam Friday morning and began collecting dead bodies from the streets for burial and assessing destructions and damage at their properties. The Sudanese Red Crescent also helped in collecting the bodies, he said. Fighters in RSF uniforms attacked several neighborhoods across Genena on Thursday, driving many families from their homes. The violence spiraled as tribal fighters joining the fray in the city of around half a million people near the border with Chad. Tour said the city suffers from “extremely dire shortage” of food, water, and other services amid a dayslong power outage. Health care workers were also struggling to reopen hospitals to treat wounded people, he said.

Gunmen killed 15 villagers and abducted five aid workers in separate attacks in Nigeria's troubled northern region, authorities said Thursday. The assailants arrived in Benue state’s Apa area and opened fire on villagers in their homes, according to David Olofu, a senior state government official. He said military personnel were among those shot in the attack and many houses were razed as villagers fled to safety. The incident in Benue is the latest in a spiral of violent attacks in which armed groups are targeting remote communities across Nigeria's northwest and central regions, often defying government and security measures. More than 80 people have been killed in Benue in the past month in such attacks. No group has claimed responsibility for the killings, though authorities have blamed Fulani herdsmen, a group of mostly young pastoralists from the Fulani tribe caught up in Nigeria’s conflict between host communities and herdsmen over limited access to water and land. In northeastern Nigeria, meanwhile, Islamic extremists abducted five aid workers in Ngala, Borno state, where an insurgency against the government has raged on for more than a decade. The aid workers included three staff members and two contractors of the international non-government organization FHI 360, all “working to provide lifesaving medical care to the people of Nigeria,” the organization said Thursday, without further details on the incident. FHI 360 condemned the abduction of the workers and called for their “unconditional, immediate and safe return,” according to a statement from Iorwakwagh Apera, the NGO's director in Nigeria. “Our priority at this time is to support our team and their families,” said Apera. The Boko Haram extremist group has been waging a bitter war against Nigeria since 2009, and the insurgency has spread over the years to the neighboring countries of Cameroon, Niger and Chad. A breakaway faction of the group formed in 2016 and became known as the Islamic State in West Africa Province and is notorious for targeting security forces and aid workers.

The ongoing drought in Eastern Africa has been made worse by human-induced climate change, which also made it much likelier to occur in the first place, an international team of climate scientists concluded. The report Wednesday came from World Weather Attribution, a group that seeks to quickly determine whether certain extreme weather events were influenced by climate change. Nineteen scientists from seven nations assessed how climate change affected rainfall in the region. "Climate change caused the low rainfall in the region," Joyce Kimutai, principal meteorologist at the Kenya Meteorological Department said. "Climate change has made the drought exceptional." The scientists analyzed historical weather data, including changes in the two main rainfall patterns in the region alongside computer model simulations dating back to the 1800s. They found that the long rains season —March through May — was turning drier and the short rains season — typically October through December — was becoming wetter due to climate change. They called the region's experience with drought "one of a kind." Friederike Otto, senior climate scientist at Imperial College London and the leader of the study, said it underscored how climate change's effects "strongly depend on how vulnerable we are." While climate change has made drought more frequent and extreme in the Horn region, the scientists acknowledged that previous failed rainy seasons, high temperatures, conflict, fragile statehood and poverty are also to blame for the "devastating impacts." The United Nations said more than 20 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda and South Sudan have been affected by the drought, with more than 2.2 million displaced in Somalia and Ethiopia and severe maternal risks to hundreds of thousands of expectant or breastfeeding women. Rod Beadle, head of relief and humanitarian affairs at Food for the Hungry, said almost 15 million children are exposed to acute malnourishment. "Despite the recent rains in North Kenya, the pressure from previous failed seasons makes for a dire situation. The flooding has impacted livestock and many pastoralists lost their primary livelihoods. The drought conditions have resulted in severely compacted soil that cannot absorb the water; hence the floods are more severe. The country is also facing severe outbreaks of cholera and other diseases as more refugees arrive," Beadle said. Development gains in the countries have been offset by a long history of natural disasters, famine and disease, said Guyo Malicha Roba, a food security expert who heads the Jameel Observatory, which works on food insecurity issues in dryland nations. Roba said the food situation in the region's drylands has addressed by raising money and with food distributions from governments and humanitarian partners, but more work needs to be done to use early-warning systems to respond more quickly to "food shocks."  

The accounts are horrific. Women killed while carrying babies on their backs, the wounded hunted down and villagers watching the execution of their neighbors, fearing they'd be next. These are some of the atrocities allegedly perpetrated by Burkina Faso's security forces in the north of the country, according to a statement Tuesday by locals from the village of Karma where the violence took place. It was early morning last Thursday, when people in the village in Yatenga province, awoke to a large group of armed men in military fatigues, driving motorcycles and armored pickup trucks. “Some villagers, happy to see ‘our soldiers', came out of their houses to welcome them. Unfortunately, this joy was cut short when the first shots rang out, also causing the first casualties," said the statement from the villagers. At least 150 civilians may have been killed and many others injured in the violence, said the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, in a statement Tuesday. The U.N. is calling for a prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigation into what it called the “horrific killing of civilians”. Also Read: At least 44 people killed by extremists in Burkina Faso's north Earlier this week, Burkina Faso's prosecutor said it had already opened an investigation into the killings, but put the death toll at 60, less than half the number estimated by the U.N. and local residents. Jihadi fighters linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have waged a violent insurgency in Burkina Faso for seven years. The violence has killed thousands of people and divided the country, leading to two coups last year. Since Capt. Ibrahim Traore seized power in September 2022 during the second coup, extrajudicial killings of civilians have increased, according to rights groups and residents. This incident — one of the deadliest against civilians by security forces — comes amid mounting allegations against the military for committing abuses against those it believes to be supporting the jihadis. Also Read: More than 70 soldiers killed in Burkina Faso, extremists say Earlier this month, Burkina Faso’s government announced it was opening other investigations into allegations of human rights abuses by its security forces after a video surfaced that appeared to show the extrajudicial killing of seven children in the country’s north. The Associated Press this month published its own findings about the video. AP’s investigation determined that Burkina Faso’s security forces killed the children in a military base outside the town of Ouahigouya. Days before last week's attack, some 40 security sources were killed near Ouahigouya. Survivors said the soldiers accused them of being jihadi accomplices, by letting them pass through their town, according to the statement from the villagers. One survivor of the attack, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisal, told The Associated Press that when the soldiers started shooting people indiscriminately, he grabbed the hand of his 11-year-old son and fled into this house with the rest of his family. However, the soldiers forced their way in, shooting open the door, he said. Also Read: Burkina Faso says 66 women, children freed from extremists “It was like a dream. If someone told us we wouldn’t die, I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said. They made them sit with a group of people in the middle of the village threatening to kill them multiple times. Instead, they killed another group of people and went door to door searching for two of the injured who had fled, he said. Since the violence, people in the community haven't been able to bury their relatives as an army roadblock prevented them reaching the village, said the statement. The abuses will create a backlash against Burkina Faso's junta and drive people into the hands of the jihadis, say conflict analysts. “The reported human rights abuses advance the playbook of militants, it gives them talking points against the security forces and helps their recruitment efforts in the north. This is an awful recipe of consequences,” said Laith Alkhouri, CEO of Intelonyx Intelligence Advisory, which provides intelligence analysis.