Gunmen killed 17 in attacks on two churches in the Kenyan town of Garissa near the border with Somalia. Twitter site Al-Kataib, maintained by Somalia’s Shabaab rebel movement, boasted of a “successful operation in Garissa.”
Gen. Carter Ham of US Africa Command warned of growing coordination between three major terror networks across the continent: al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al-Shabaab in Somalia, and Boko Haram in Nigeria.
After more than a week of student anti-austerity demonstrations in Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir finally responded to the movement, dismissing the protesters as “bubbles and aliens” who will be “dealt with.”
The Special Court for Sierra Leone convicted Liberia’s former president Charles Taylor on all 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war.
On the eve of the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, a Friends of the Earth report reveals widespread rights violations and environmental destruction from a Bank-funded “land grab” in Uganda.
After re-taking the contested oil-rich border enclave of Heglig, Sudan’s President Omar Bashir called the South Sudanese “insects” and said he will will not allow the South to export any oil through the cross-border pipeline.
With Sudan and South Sudan effectively at war, each are apparently arming guerillas in the other’s territory. The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey finds that the South is arming rebels in Kordofan, while Khartoum arms insurgents across the border.
The latest coup d’etat in Guinea-Bissau is being linked by Western diplomats to the international drug trade. Presidential candidate Carlos Gomes may have ran afoul of the military by pledging to crack down on cocaine transshipments.
South Sudan accused Khartoum April 5 both of bombing an oil pipeline near the town of Heglig, in South Kordofan state, and of trying to build an “illegal” pipeline crossing the border towards the South’s oil fields.
The International Criminal Court issued its first verdict, a unanimous decision that Congo militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is guilty of conscripting children and using them to participate actively in hostilities.
Former Somali prime minister Mohamed Ali Samantar accepted legal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity in US federal court. The civil suit was brought by survivors of his repression who now have asylum in the US.
As Ethiopian forces press their offensive in Somalia, Shabaab rebels relinquished control of Baidoa, a key southern city that had been under their control for three years. The rebels still control the largest swath of Somalia’s south.
