Day: January 1, 2023

Cairo, A vessel carrying at least 700 migrants was intercepted off the eastern coast of Libya, the coast guard said. It was one of the largest interceptions in recent months of migrants seeking a better life in Europe through the war-torn North African country.

The coast guard said the boat was stopped Friday off the Mediterranean town of Moura, 90 kilometers (56 miles) west of the eastern city of Benghazi, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

It said in a statement that the migrants hail from different nations and that those who illegally entered Libya would be handed over to their home countries.

The statement did not provide further details.

The coast guard posted images on Facebook showing a large, overcrowded vessel with most of those on board appearing to be young people.

It was one of the largest interceptions in recent months of migrants sailing to Europe, a destination for thousands fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

In August last year, Italian military vessels aided a boat crammed with 539 migrants off the southern island of Lampedusa. The boat was launched from Libyan shores.

Source: Bahrain News Agency

UNITED NATIONS, The General Assembly on Friday approved an annual regular budget for the United Nations of about 3.396 billion U.S. dollars.

The 2023 budget is higher than that of 2022, which stood at 3.122 billion dollars.

The regular budget covers UN activities across a range of areas, including political affairs, international justice and law, regional cooperation for development, human rights and humanitarian affairs, and public information.

The world body has a separate peacekeeping budget, which has a fiscal cycle ending on June 30. The regular budget covers the calendar year.

Source: Nam News Network

BUKAVU (DR Congo), Mudslides killed at least 10 people at two makeshift mines in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after torrential rain, local officials said.

The disasters came after heavy rain overnight Thursday to Friday across the Fizi enclave in South Kivu province, said locals.

The mudslides hit two gold mining sites in the area.

“The provisional toll is 10 people dead, nine others injured, and missing people,” Aime Kaway, the administrator at Fizi, said, adding that it was difficult to know the exact number of missing.

“Most of the victims are artisanal miners and other persons who frequent the two mining sites,” he said.

Onesphore Kabandilwa, a local Red Cross official, whose teams were handling the burial of the victims, confirmed the toll of 10 people.

Search teams were still working to try to recover other bodies, he added.

Floods and landslides provoked by heavy rains often prove deadly in DR Congo.

In mid-December, floods caused by torrential rain killed more than 160 people in the capital Kinshasa, in the west of the country.

Source: Nam News Network

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Saturday for an attack Friday on a police checkpoint in Egypt’s Suez Canal city of Ismailia. At least four people, including three police officers, were killed, officials and state-run media said.

The attack also wounded 12 others, mostly conscripts who were taken to a hospital, according to a casualty tally document at the hospital.

The dead included three police officers and a still unidentified person, the hospital document obtained by The Associated Press showed.

“A cell of soldiers of the caliphate managed to attack an Egyptian police roadblock … with a machine gun,” the militant group’s Amaq news agency said Saturday.

The attack took place late in the afternoon in Ismailia city, on the western side of the Suez Canal, according to security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The media office of Ismailia province described the attack as a terrorist strike.

State-run al-Qahera New television reported that security forces killed one of the attackers. It broadcast graphic footage purportedly showing a body, saying it was the dead militant.

Egypt has been battling the Islamic State extremist group in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula for years. The militants have carried out numerous attacks in Sinai and elsewhere in the country, mainly targeting security forces, minority Christians, and those who they accuse of collaborating with the military and police.

In May, at least 11 Egyptian soldiers, including an officer, were killed in a militant attack on a water pumping station east of the Suez Canal.

The pace of IS attacks in Sinai’s main theater and elsewhere has slowed to a trickle since February 2018, when the military launched a big 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