Militiamen

The United Nations and African Union on Thursday ended a 13-year mission to keep the peace in the vast Sudanese region of Darfur, even as recent violent clashes leave residents fearful of renewed fighting.

Scores of freshly-dug graves fill the church compound in Mai-Kadra. Shovels abandoned by weary hands are strewn on the dirt among empty cans of lemon air freshener that fail to mask the stench of death.

Tigrayan forces fighting Ethiopian government troops are standing firm on the southern front and engaging soldiers round the town of Adigrat to the north, said Debretsion Gebremichael, head of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, via text message.

Yoruba World Congress, YWC, has announced the change of its name to “ILANA OMO OODUA” to help propagate the quest for self-determination of Yoruba nation and in honour of Obafemi Awolowo philosophy.

Militiamen killed a United Nations peacekeeper from Rwanda and injured two others in an ambush on a convoy in northwest Central African Republic on Monday, the UN said.

The death toll from COVID-19 surpassed half a million people on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, a grim milestone for the global pandemic that seems to be resurgent in some countries even as other regions are still grappling with the first wave.

Forty people, including nine soldiers, have been killed in a spate of attacks in central Mali, authorities said Friday, with most of the deaths caused by inter-ethnic violence in the deeply troubled region.

Iran signalled Sunday it favours a de-escalation after 10 days of heightened tensions with the United States during which both sides fired missiles and Tehran accidentally shot down a passenger aircraft.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites “very hard” if Iran attacks Americans or U.S. assets after a drone strike that killed Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani and an Iraqi militia leader, as tens of thousands of people marched in Iraq to mourn their deaths.

Thousands of Iraqis, including senior politicians, attended the funeral of a top Iranian general and Iraqi militiamen in Baghdad on Saturday, following a U.S. airstrike that sharply escalated tensions across the region.

At least 35 people have died in clashes between traders and militiamen in the Central African Republic capital, Bangui, the local Red Cross says.

Suspected militiamen reportedly opened fire on residents of Takum, a Taraba community Sunday morning, killing dozens.

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday gave additional information about its bombing of Iranian Quds Force in Syria, alleging that the drones that Iran intended to use against the Jewish state on Saturday night had been flown into Syria from Tehran several weeks ago.

A woman and her child were the first two cases confirmed with Ebola in Congo’s South Kivu region this week, opening a new front in the fight against the outbreak.

Sixteen militiamen have been killed in northeastern DR Congo, the military said on Tuesday, an area where ethnic violence has left at least 160 dead and forced hundreds of thousands to flee in the past two weeks.

Islamic State group jihadists have killed 35 pro-Damascus fighters in Syria, in what a monitoring group described Saturday as their deadliest operation since the fall of the “caliphate”.

Two people, including a soldier and a vigilante, were killed when two female suicide bombers detonated their explosives in Borno state, military and militia sources said Friday.

Fighting raged south of Libya's capital Sunday despite a UN call for a two-hour ceasefire, as forces of strongman Khalifa Haftar and the internationally recognised government exchanged air strikes.