Login to BlackFacts.com using your favorite Social Media Login. Click the appropriate button below and you will be redirected to your Social Media Website for confirmation and then back to Blackfacts.com once successful.
Enter the email address and password you used to join BlackFacts.com. If you cannot remember your login information, click the “Forgot Password” link to reset your password.
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria’s northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years,...
He replaces Debretsion Gebremichael, whose immunity from prosecution was removed Thursday.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International said Thursday that scores of civilians were killed in a \"massacre\" in the Tigray region, that witnesses blamed on forces backing the local ruling party.
The \"massacre\" is the first reported incident of large-scale civilian fatalities in a week-old conflict between the regional ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize.
\"Amnesty International can today confirm... that scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra (May Cadera) town in the southwest of Ethiopia's Tigray Region on the night of 9 November,\" the rights group said in a report.
Amnesty said it had \"digitally verified gruesome photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers.\"
The dead \"had gaping wounds that appear to have been inflicted by sharp weapons such as knives and machetes,\" Amnesty said, citing witness accounts.
Witnesses said the attack was carried out by TPLF-aligned forces after a defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian military, though Amnesty said it \"has not been able to confirm who was responsible for the killings\".
It nonetheless called on TPLF commanders and officials to \"make clear to their forces and their supporters that deliberate attacks on civilians are absolutely prohibited and constitute war crimes\".
Abiy ordered military operations in Tigray on November 4, saying they were prompted by a TPLF attack on federal military camps -- a claim the party denies.
The region has been under a communications blackout ever since, making it difficult to verify competing claims on the ground.
Abiy said Thursday his army had made major gains in western Tigray.
Thousands of Ethiopians have fled across the border into neighboring Sudan, and the UN is sounding the alarm about a humanitarian crisis in Tigray.
American social media giant Facebook has announced the company is willing to open a new office in Lagos, Nigeria, in the coming year.
Struggling with hunger, Covid-19 and death threats, the residents of Nairobi's Kariobangi shack settlement are speaking out against state demolitions that left thousands homeless.
The demolitions in the Kariobangi Sewage Farmers estate, in the northeast of the city, were carried out in May and continued for days, destroying at least 600 homes in addition to shops, schools and churches.
The state-run Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC) claims ownership of the land, but residents have legal documents from the Nairobi City County that they say prove their rights to the land.
According to George Kegoro, the executive director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, the privatisation of public land, including through \"corrupt processes\", has contributed to the evictions and demolitions in shack settlements.
Kegoro noted that the Kenya Human Rights Commission is discussing the possibility of seeking \"legal redress\" for the forced evictions and demolitions in Kariobangi.
At least four people were killed as protests spread across several Ethiopian cities on Tuesday after a prominent singer from the country's largest ethnic group was shot dead, according to medical sources and a relative.
With his political lyrics, he was seen as a voice of the Oromo people during years of anti-government protests that swept Abiy to power in 2018.
On Tuesday morning, large crowds of protesters poured into the capital Addis Ababa from the surrounding Oromia region, snarling roads with stones and blocking traffic.
A resident of Western Hararge, in Oromia told AFP on condition of anonymity that his cousin had been killed by young Oromo nationalists known as Querroo, because he was from the Amhara ethnic group.
The US embassy said Tuesday that it was \"monitoring reports of protest and unrest, including gunfire throughout Addis Ababa\".
The Global Blood Fund, which has been assisting Kenya in blood donation initiatives, wants the country to seek ways of ending dependency on learning institutions.
The organisation's executive director Gavin Evans told the Sunday Nation via email that, from his observation in African countries they have worked with, 60 to 70 per cent of blood in the banks is typically from high schools.
With a population of nearly 50 million, the World Health Organization recommends that a country of Kenya's standard needs about one million units of blood annually.
Recognising the need for additional investment in the national blood bank, the government has allocated Sh1 billion and employed an additional 22 staff to improve the level of services and expand blood collection to all sites in the country.
In March, the Kenya National Blood Transfusion Service (KNBTS) revealed that 1,000 units of blood, one-third of the total collected between January and March, was disposed of because it expired before being tested.
Six Nigerian soldiers were killed in a jihadist attack on a military base in northeastern Nigeria, military sources disclosed on Sunday.
Fighters from the Islamic State of West Africa (ISWAP), Boko Haram branch, in trucks equipped with machine guns, attacked the Auno base, 25 km from Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, the sources said.
“We lost six soldiers in the attacks launched by the terrorists on Saturday around 6:30 p.m.,” one officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The clashes lasted for two hours until the overwhelmed Nigerian military was forced to retreat, another military source said, confirming this assessment.
The army is searching for 45 soldiers who could not be located but who it believes managed to escape, the source added.
The attackers looted weapons and burned buildings inside the base before being repelled with air support, according to the same source.
The area has recently been targeted by a series of attacks on the army and abductions of drivers at fake security force checkpoints.
ISWAP, which has split off from Boko Haram to affiliate with the EI, has been stepping up attacks against the armed forces and has killed dozens, if not hundreds, of Nigerian soldiers. But it is also increasingly accused of attacking civilians.
In February, at least 30 passengers and lorry drivers forced to stop for the night at the entrance to Auno because of an army imposed curfew were killed in an attack blamed on jihadists.
More than 36,000 people were killed and about two million displaced in a decade of conflict in northeastern Nigeria.
AFP
Abuja/maiduguri — -Troops engage insurgents in fierce gun battle
Boko Haram on Saturday attacked three local government areas of Borno State, in audacious attacks barely a day after President Muhammadu Buhari claimed the terrorist group had been massively degraded.
The comments came following an assault on Kolloram village, in Gubio Local Government Area of Borno State, in which 81 residents were killed.
But Boko Haram returned with an attack on another settlement in Gubio Local Government Area, Dunga village, Saturday morning.
It would be recalled that the village, Faduma Kolloram, in Gubio Local Government Area tasted the fury of the terrorists on Tuesday, when Boko Haram accused the villagers of giving intelligence on their positions to the military.
\"The Nigerian Army is deeply saddened by the unfortunate incident in which suspected retreating Boko Haram/ISWAP terrorists, with a few sleeper cells within communities, ambushed and killed innocent women and children in Faduma Koloram village, Gubio LGA of Borno State.
More than 300 schoolboys abducted last week by armed men in northwestern Nigeria have been released, the Katsina state governor... View Article
The post Nigerian official says over 300 abducted schoolboys freed appeared first on TheGrio.
Students swamp new online theatre classes
Friday, May 15, 2020 0:01
By MARGARETTA WA GACHERU
Fanuel Mulwa and Sheila Munyiva in a past performance.
The course, says NPAS’s founder and artistic director Stuart Nash, is specially designed for secondary school students to “help parents through these difficult times.”
Created in partnership with the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage, the course has multiplied into more than eight online classes in order to meet the immense response from the public, specifically Form One through Form Four students (plus a number of persistent pre- and post- high schoolers).
Those students who had the good fortune to see NPAS’s poster which was circulated all over social media, (from Facebook and Twitter to What’s App and various other online chat groups) since late April have been getting crash courses in the basic elements of performance.
And since NPAS first opened in 2017, both have been in all the studio’s musicals, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease, Caucasian Chalk Circle and most recently Sarafina where Fanuel played Crocodile and Hellen was the mother of Sarafina (played by Sheila Munyiva)
Both have also taught at NPAS so Stuart felt secure putting secondary students in their hands.
Protests against police brutality in Lagos turned bloody on Tuesday despite a state-wide curfew, with eyewitnesses telling CNN that multiple demonstrators have been shot by soldiers. Demonstrators have taken part in daily protests across the country for nearly two weeks over widespread claims of kidnapping, harassment, and extortion by a police unit know as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). Tuesday […]
Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari has directed security forces to operate within \"the confines of legality\" and show restraint in countering protests and violence.
Activists supported by the government have taken to patrolling the main highway in Maiduguri in anti-jihadist efforts.
July 2: Hachalu buried in Ambo, blast rocks Addis
\tThe funeral of Oromo protest singer Hachalu Hundessa has been held in his hometown of Ambo in the Oromia regional state, the BBC reports.
Photos courtesy: BBC Africa LIVE page
\tMeanwhile there are reports of a deadly blast in the capital Addis Ababa with most people on Twitter citing local police.
The arrest comes in the wake of mass protests against the shooting and killing on Monday night of a famed Oromo musician and activist in Addis Ababa.
Meanwhile, his media outfit the Oromia Media Network, OMN, reported on Tuesday that its offices in the capital Addis Ababa had been raided and staff taken away by security agents to an undisclosed location.
Death of Oromo artist: Protests, internet outage, social media reactions
\tThousands of Ethiopian youth on Tuesday accompanied the body of a famed Oromo singer and songwriter to the city of Ambo in the Oromia regional state for funeral rites and burial.
The death toll stands at 81 after suspected members of the extremist group Boko Haram carried out an attack in Borno state.
Suspected members of the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram carried out the attack in Foduma Kolomaiya village in the Gubio area of Borno state.
Boko Haram members often force villagers to pay illegal taxes by threatening to steal their livestock, but some resist.
Bunu said the massacre was likely in retaliation for the death of two Boko Haram members \"whom the villagers managed to kill when the insurgents attempted to attack them about two months ago.\"
Boko Haram and a breakaway faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province, are both active in the area.
Authorities in Cameroon are investigating a fire inside a maximum-security prison in the port city of Douala that sent three inmates to the hospital with serious burns.
A fire official said two firefighters were also injured Thursday trying to put out the blaze at the New Bell jail in the commercial capital.
Firefighters were able to keep the fire from spreading to a heavily populated neighborhood close to the prison.
It is unclear what started the fire, nor if the fire was linked to overcrowded conditions in the prison.
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, say overcrowding, poor sanitation and violence are chronic issues confronting Cameroon prisons.
Nearly ten years after the UN called for a major clean-up of areas of the Niger Delta polluted by the oil giant Shell and other oil companies, decontamination work has begun on only 11% of planned sites while vast areas remain heavily contaminated, according to a new investigation by four NGOs published today.
Main findings
Amongst other things, the four NGO's 30-page report, 'No Clean-Up, No Justice', finds that:
*There are still communities in Ogoniland without access to clean water supplies;
*Health and environmental monitoring has not been carried out;
*There has been no public accounting for how $31m funding provided since 2018 has been spent;
*Eleven of 16 companies contracted for the clean-up are reported to have no registered expertise in oil pollution remediation or related areas;
*Highlights that \"emergency measures\" proposed by UNEP have not been properly implemented and that the billion-dollar clean-up project launched by the Nigerian government in 2016 has been ineffective.
Recommendations to Shell
Amnesty and the other NGOs are demanding a rapid clean-up, and in particular that Shell:
*Provides proper compensation to all communities affected by failed or delayed clean-ups of oil spills;
*Decommissions all aging and damaged pipelines commits to funding the clean-up of Ogoniland and the rest of the Niger Delta until completed.
*Ensure that Ogoni people can access their basic rights, including the right to safe drinking water;
*Develop and implements a strategy to address the root causes of oil pollution, while fully involving local communities;
*Strengthen HYPREP and ensures it is an independent, transparent agency without the involvement of Shell in oversight and management structures;
*And publish all information on the clean-up project and its progress.
Recommendations to European governments
And finally, the NGOs are also calling on European governments which are home to oil companies operating in the Niger Delta to:
*Make a fundamental shift to prioritise the clean-up of Ogoniland and the rest of the Niger Delta over the interests of companies;
*Increase engagement with and support for the Nigerian government to ensure effective implementation of the UN's recommendations, independent oversight of the oil industry and effective remedy for affected communities;
*And to establish strong international regulations for corporate liability abroad - such as an EU law for mandatory Human Rights due diligence and a binding UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights.
We begin with what is the latest wave of violence in some troubled parts of Mali.
Dozens of troops have either been killed or gone missing after attackers ambushed their convoy in central Mali on Sunday.
Some of the vehicles were able to extricate themselves from the ambush, but of the 64 troops who had been in the convoy, only about 20 were present at a roll call.
In recent years, Mali has been facing a serious security situation.
On the programme we try to see how the country is dealing with the crisis and we ask, is Mali heading out the crisis or sinking further into it?
Maiduguri — A top Boko Haram logistics supplier has been arrested in Borno State by men of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).
The state NSCDC Commandant, Mr. Ibrahim Abdullahi, while parading the suspect yesterday in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, said he was arrested with a car filled with fuel and other food products.
The Borno NCSDC boss gave the name of the suspect as Bakura Ibrahim, a 35-year-old who was arrested on June 6, at the Muna Garage along Gamboru Ngala Road, Maiduguri.
\"The command came to the conclusion that the rise in attacks is due to logistics supplies and sleeper cells which are very active in the society, hence we intensified our intelligence gathering which yielded positive results,\" he said.
\"On April 4, one Mohammed Mohammed, of Ruwan Zafi, Custom area Maiduguri, was arrested with six vandalised rolls of aluminium conductor cables concealed inside a bag of beans among others,\" he said.
