World News

The UN refugee agency says more than 7,000 have fled their homes after a deadly militant attack on an area housing 35,000 Malian refugees and internally displaced people in western Niger. Most of those who fled were Malian refugees. A spokesperson for the UNHCR in Niger, Jean Sebastien Josset, told the BBC that those who fled the attack are now ...

A lawyer for the family of George Floyd, whose death sparked unrest across the US, has accused a police officer of “premeditated murder”. Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder, but lawyer Benjamin Crump told CBS news it was a case of first-degree murder. “We think that he had intent… almost nine minutes he kept his knee ...

Some 30 people have been killed in eastern Burkina Faso in a gun attack on a cattle market, reports say. Gunmen on motorbikes fired into the crowded market in Kompienga town around lunchtime on Saturday, eyewitnesses and residents said. It is unclear who was behind the attack, but Burkina Faso has seen a recent sharp rise in jihadist violence and ...

A Rwandan court on Thursday handed a life sentence to a former politician found guilty of orchestrating the killing of tens of thousands of people during the 1994 genocide, a court spokesman said. Ladislas Ntaganzwa, head of the commune of Nyakizu in southern Rwanda, was indicted in 1996 by the Arusha, Tanzania-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on charges of ...

Armed men on motorcycles killed 27 civilians in central Mali in three attacks on ethnic Dogon farming villages in less than 24 hours, local officials said on Thursday. Central Mali has been ravaged in recent years by ethnic reprisal killings, as recriminations between herding and farming communities over jihadist violence compound longstanding grievances. Local officials told Reuters they believed the ...

The UN refugee agency has said it is working closely with partners and governments in eastern Africa to find solutions for urban refugees in these challenging times sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The UNHCR said urban refugees are struggling to survive as economic impact of COVID-19 worsens in East, Horn and Great Lakes of Africa. “Refugees in urban areas across the East, Horn and ...

Nigeria must urgently address its failure to protect and provide education to an entire generation of children in the Northeast, a region devastated by years of Boko Haram atrocities and gross violations by the military, Amnesty International warned today in a chilling new report. The 91-page report, ‘We dried our tears’: Addressing the toll on children of Northeast Nigeria’s conflict, ...

The UN says at least 38 people have been killed by an armed group in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. They were killed in a series of attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu. A local monitoring groups says nearly 500 civilians have been killed by the ADF since ...

In Malawi, where children with albinism face attacks, and even ritual killings, going to school can expose them to life-threatening dangers. The UN is helping to make schools safer for these vulnerable students.  Chinsisi Jafali, a 14-year-old with albinism, knows that going to school is a risky prospect, but it’s a risk he’s prepared to take. “I have six siblings ...

The World Health Organization is warning Africa against relaxing its testing efforts on Covid-19. So far Africa has recorded over 115,000 cases of coronavirus with deaths just a little over 3,400 as at May 26. Despite Africa’s case count still low compared to other continents, the WHO says that could be the case due to limited testing in some African ...