Al-Qaeda leader Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, said to be behind the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was killed at a checkpoint in Somalia by forces who didn’t realize he was the most wanted man in Africa.
Thousands of families have been displaced in weeks of fighting between the Ahlu Sunna sufi militia and fundamentalist Shabab insurgents in central Somalia. Drought conditions in the countryside have worsened the plight of the displaced.
Security forces killed seven when hundreds of local artisanal miners who invaded the premises of Barrick Gold’s North Mara mine in Tanzania—the latest in a series of deadly confrontations in Africa’s mineral sector.
Ethiopia’s Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) charges that the army has opened an offensive that is targetting civilians in the ethnically Somali region in the country’s east, and is demanding an immediate UN investigation.
South Sudan is witnessing a sharp rise in armed conflict—with less than three months to go before the formal independence of the fledgling nation. Heavy fighting has killed some 1,000 and displaced an estimated 100,000 since southerners voted overwhelmingly for… Read moreWar continues on borders of South Sudan
President Yoweri Museveni has ordered the Uganda Communication Commission to shut down all social networking sites, fearing they will be used as a tool for organizing protests following deadly unrest in Kampala.
Inspired by the Arab Spring, protesters in Swaziland are calling for King Mswati III—Africa’s last absolute monarch—to allow multi-party democracy and rescind salary cuts to public employees.
French special forces aided in the capture of Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo, who apparently surrendered after French tanks moved in on his residence while it was surrounded by opposition leader Alassane Ouattara’s forces.
A Somali pirate was sentenced by a US district court to 25 years in prison for attacking a Danish ship off the coast of Somalia in 2008, for which he and other pirates received a $1.7 million ransom.
As pro-Alassane Ouattara forces move into Abidjan, residents who support rival Laurent Gbagbo fear reprisals. Reports of atrocities on both sides are mounting—including people being burned alive.
The shelling of a market in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, which killed at least 25 people and wounded 40, may be a crime against humanity, the UN says. Laurent Gbagbo denied responsibility and urged his people to “fight the rebels.”
Some 20 prisoners escaped in Burkina Faso after middle and high school students set four police stations on fire to protest the killing of four youth by police last month.
