Day: May 8, 2022

Raiders killed at least 35 people, including a baby, in an attack on a gold mine in Ituri, in the strife-torn northeast of Democratic Republic of Congo, local sources said Sunday.

One local official, Jean-Pierre Bikilisende, of the rural Mungwalu settlement in Djugu, Ituri, said the CODECO militia had carried out the attack on the artisanal mine.

Bikilisende said the militia had attacked the Camp Blanquette gold mine and that 29 bodies had been retrieved, while another six burned bodies had been found buried at the site.

Among the dead was a 4-month-old baby, he added.

“This is a provisional toll,” he said, as there had been other people killed whose bodies had been thrown down the mine shafts.

Several other civilians had been reported missing, he said, adding, “The search continues.”

Camp Blanquette was set up in a forest, far from the nearest military outpost, so help came too late, Bikilisende said.

Cherubin Kukundila, a civil leader in Mungwalu, said that at least 50 people had been killed in the raid.

Several people were wounded, nine of them seriously. They were being treated at Mungwalu hospital, he told AFP.

During their attack, the raiders had ransacked shops, carried off what the miners had dug out of the mine and burned down houses, he added.

The Camp Blanquette mine lies 7 kilometers from Mungwalu.

CODECO, the name for the Cooperative for the Development of the Congo, is a political-religious sect that claims to represent the interests of the Lendu ethnic group.

The Lendu and Hema communities have a long-standing feud that led to thousands of deaths between 1999 and 2003 before intervention by a European peacekeeping force.

Violence then resumed in 2017, blamed on the emergence of CODECO.

CODECO is considered one of the deadliest of the militias operating in the east of the country, blamed for a number of ethnic massacres in the province of Ituri.

It has been held responsible for attacks on soldiers and civilians, including those fleeing the conflict and aid workers.

Its attacks have caused hundreds of deaths and prompted more than 1.5 million people to flee their homes.

Ituri and neighboring North Kivu province have been under siege since May last year. The army and police have replaced senior administrators in a bid to stem attacks by armed groups.

Despite this, the authorities have been unable to stop the massacres regularly carried out on civilians.

Source: Voice of America

ACCRA— About 5,306 terror-related attacks took place in West Africa in three years, claiming over 16,726 lives, thousands of injuries and millions displaced and living under austere circumstances.

Dominic Nitiwul, Ghana’s Minister of Defence, also said that as of the end of the first quarter of 2022, 840 attacks had already resulted in 2,482 casualties.

The Minister was speaking at the opening ceremony of the Extraordinary Meeting of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Committee of Chiefs of Defence Staff, on in Accra.

The two-day forum would offer the opportunity for Chiefs of Defence Staff to dialogue and discuss defence and security matters affecting the West Africa Sub-Region.

Countries present at the event are Ghana, Nigeria, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo, Benin.

Others are Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Liberia.

Nitiwul said the Chiefs of Defence Staff had a pivotal role to play in shaping the defence and security policies needed to achieve regional peace and public safety.

He said the Sub Region was saddled with complex transnational crimes committed both in the physical and cyber domains.

Nitiwul also said terrorist activities had assumed cross border dimensions with far-reaching implications for civil societies, regional security and global peace and development.

“In the land domain, countries are confronted with environmental degradation caused by illegal mining and illegal lumbering, development and expansion of slums, illegal migration, kidnappings and abductions, money laundering, proliferation of small arms and light weapons and the trafficking of narcotics.”

“The security situation is also compounded by threats to democratic stability, land and chieftaincy disputes, banditry and armed robberies, high youth unemployment, the menace of nomadic herdsmen and vigilantism,” he said.

He however noted that the meeting represented the will of the ECOWAS leadership to save the entire community and contribute to a favourable global peace and security situation.

The Minister said the fight against terrorism and activities of extremist groups could be won through accurate and predictive intelligence.

He said there was currently a limited collaboration amongst various national intelligence agencies across the Sub-Region, which had caused a serious limitation in the fight against the activities of Terrorist Armed Groups and Violent Extremist Organisations.

“These groups rather have increased collaboration and information sharing across national borders in a bid to outwit security forces and impose their will on the population.”

“As professionals, we must resolve to bury our differences imposed by nationality, culture, ethnicity, language, religion etc and forge ahead with greater collaboration.”

“It remains imperative that we bridge the gaps that exist in information and intelligence analysis to pave way for a better integration for effective political, social and military direction,” Nitiwul said.

Vice Admiral Seth Amoama, Chairman of the Committee of Chiefs of Defence Staff expressed worry over the incidence of coup d’tats recorded in the last couple of years.

“Just as we thought we have to make a very significant progress in dealing with the situation in Malik and Gambia, similar unfortunate Burkina Faso and Guinea Bissau in January and February,” he lamented.

The Vice-Admiral however, expressed appreciation to ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State for their quick intervention in resolving the situations in these countries.

He said the Accra Initiative had been one of many ECOWAS Initiatives necessary to safeguard collective security in the interest of its people.

“It has become necessary to convene from time to time to update ourselves as Security Chiefs of the West African Region to take stock of issues that have been discussed and its implementation to safeguard our collective security in the interest of the good people of the region,” he said.

He encouraged them to synchronise efforts and strategise against terrorism in the region.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

An Islamic State affiliate in Egypt on Sunday claimed responsibility for an attack that targeted a water pumping station east of the Suez Canal, killing at least 11 soldiers.

At least five other soldiers were wounded in Saturday’s attack, according to the Egyptian military. It was one of the deadliest attacks on Egyptian security forces in recent years.

Thousands of people attended separate funerals for the dead Sunday.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, meanwhile, presided over a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which includes the military’s top commanders, to discuss the consequences of the attack, his office said without offering further details.

The extremist group announced its claim of the attack in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified but it was released on Telegram as similar claims have been in the past.

The attack took place in the town of Qantara in the province of Ismailia, which stretches eastwards from the Suez Canal.

Militants attacked troops at a checkpoint guarding the pumping facility, then fled the site. The military said troops were pursuing the attackers in an isolated area of the northern Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt is battling an Islamic State-led insurgency in the Sinai that intensified after the military overthrew an elected but divisive Islamist president in 2013. The militants have carried out scores of attacks, mainly targeting security forces and Christians.

The pace of militant attacks in Sinai’s main theater of operations and elsewhere has slowed to a trickle since February 2018, when the military launched an extensive operation in Sinai as well as parts of the Nile Delta and deserts along the country’s western border with Libya.

Source: Voice of America

MOGADISHU— At least 30 Burundian soldiers were killed and 20 others injured in Tuesday’s attack by al-Shabaab militants on an African Union base in southern Somalia, according to a Burundian official.

The official, who requested anonymity, said that 10 soldiers died on the spot, and the rest succumbed to their wounds. He confirmed that other soldiers are still missing.

Al-Shabaab said it killed 173 soldiers in the attack on the AU base in the village of El-Baraf, about 150 kilometers north of Mogadishu. The casualty figure has not been independently verified. A separate source said that 161 soldiers were at the camp at the time of attack. The Burundian official confirmed that number.

The Burundian official said that the soldiers had intelligence al-Shabaab was gathering in a nearby village about 48 hours prior to the attack. He said the soldiers prepared to defend themselves and dug trenches. He said what caught the soldiers by surprise was the enormity of al-Shabab explosives detonated at the camp. He said the militants used three truck bombs, one of which fell into a ditch. He estimated the militants detonated about 20 kilograms of explosives, and that 450 militants overran the camp.

The official said the suicide truck bombs caused most of the casualties. Earlier, the government of Burundi reported 10 of their soldiers were killed, with five others missing and 25 injured. Burundi also said 20 al-Shabaab militants were killed in the attack.

On Twitter, Burundi President Evariste Ndayishimiye said there are no words strong enough to condemn the terrorist attack against the Burundian contingent. He wrote, “I join with all of Africa which has just lost sons and daughters … to console the hard-hit families.”

The African Union, the Somali government and the embassy of the United States in Mogadishu have all strongly condemned the al-Shabaab attack. AU chief Moussa Faki Mahamat paid tribute to the Burundian soldiers killed, and said the “heinous” attack will not lessen the support of AU forces to Somalia.

The Somali Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the international community to increase and provide the higher-end capability to Somali security forces and AU forces so they can effectively combat terrorism in Somalia.

The incident marked the first major al-Shabaab attack on AU forces since the mission changed its name and operational structures last month. The UN Security Council, which authorized the new mission called the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia, gave it the mandate to reduce the threat posed by al-Shabaab, support the capacity building of Somali security forces, and conduct a phased handover of security responsibilities to the Somali government. The mission’s mandate runs through the end of 2024.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK