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KW 33: 170 Sudanese gunmen killed in Ethiopia, Zambia opposition leader Hichilema wins landslide in presidential election, Ebola case reported in Ivory Coast

– NEWS –

170 Sudanese gunmen killed in Ethiopia: At least 170 gunmen from neighboring Sudan have been killed in western Ethiopia, according to authorities. Without giving further details, the regional government of Benishangul-Gumuz announced on Saturday that the gunmen were „anti-peace elements“. According to the statement, their aim was to spread terror among the population by killing civilians and to disrupt the implementation of the controversial dam project.
derstandard.at

Zambia opposition leader Hichilema wins landslide in presidential election: Opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema has secured a stunning landslide victory over incumbent Edgar Lungu in Zambia’s presidential election. Hichilema defeated the incumbent, President Edgar Lungu, by a landslide – more than a million votes. It was Hichilema’s sixth attempt at winning the presidency. Lungu accepted defeat and congratulated him. In a speech on national TV, Hichilema said he was committed to a smooth transfer of power, which is expected in the coming days. However, he repeated his claims that the elections were not free and fair. Lungu’s six-year rule was criticised for alleged human rights abuses, corruption, a failing economy and massive unemployment. On top of the economic problems, activists and opposition politicians warned that increasingly repressive tactics from Lungu’s government would cause an erosion of the country’s democracy, which was seen as a model across the continent after Zambia’s founding father, Kenneth Kaunda, reluctantly stepped aside when he lost the first multiparty elections in 1991. Even during the voting, the government deployed the military to the streets, citing attacks on Lungu supporters, and it restricted access to social media sites, a decision that a court quickly overturned.
reuters.com, bbc.com, nytimes.com

Ebola case reported in Ivory Coast: A patient has tested positive for Ebola in Abidjan, marking the first case of the disease in Ivory Coast in more than a quarter century, the World Health Organization (WHO) said. The 18-year-old Guinean woman now undergoing treatment in Abidjan had arrived Thursday by bus, raising fears that others may have become infected during her journey. Ivorian Health Minister Pierre N’Gou Demba said the woman tested positive the following day, “and was diagnosed and treated immediately by our health services.” It was not immediately known whether anyone else had fallen ill with Ebola in Guinea. Health officials said it was not immediately known whether the case was linked to an outbreak earlier this year in neighboring Guinea, which had been declared over in mid-June.
apnews.com

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Sudan to hand over Omar al-Bashir to ICC for Darfur trial: Sudan could hand over former president Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court to be tried for his part in the deaths of 300,000 people during the Darfur war, the country’s foreign minister said Wednesday. Sudan’s cabinet is looking to approve the decision with the Council of Ministers so that al-Bashir can be tried for Darfur war crimes at the ICC in The Hague. Sudanese Foreign Minister Mariam al-Mahdi told state media the „cabinet decided to hand over wanted officials to the ICC“ on Wednesday. Bashir, who ruled autocratically over Sudan for three decades, faces charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the Darfur massacres.
dw.com

Shell to pay millions for 1970 Niger Delta oil spills: A Dutch court had ruled in January that Shell had polluted the Niger Delta in southern Nigeria and ordered the Anglo-Dutch energy giant to pay compensation. Lawyers for company and the affected communities on August 11 confirmed the decision by the Nigerian subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell Plc on compensation of $111 million (€94,9 million), news agency AFP reported. The company however maintained that the spills were caused by third parties during the civil war in Nigeria.
dw.com

Algeria forest fires: Wildfires tearing through northern Algeria have now killed at least 65 people, including 28 soldiers deployed to help the firefighters. The blazes in the mountainous Kabylie region are some of the worst in the country’s history. Officials have blamed arson for many of them. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has declared three days of national mourning for the victims.
bbc.com

South Africa court postpones Zuma corruption trial to next month reuters.com
At least 22 killed in central Nigeria attack africanews.com
Rwanda military says it has helped Mozambique retake Mocímboa da Praia africanews.com
UN Human Rights Council opposes Ghana’s anti-gay bill africanews.com

– BACKGROUND –

Sexual violence used as weapon of war in Ethiopia’s Tigray, Amnesty finds: Ethiopian and Eritrean troops have raped hundreds of women and girls during the Tigray war, subjecting some to sexual slavery and mutilation, Amnesty International said in a report Wednesday. The report, „I Don’t Know If They Realized I Was A Person: Rape and Other Sexual Violence in the Conflict in Tigray, Ethiopia,“ reveals how women and girls were subjected to sexual violence by members of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF), the Eritrean Defense Force (EDF), the Amhara Regional Police Special Force (ASF), and Fano, an Amhara militia group. Soldiers and militias subjected Tigrayan women and girls to rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, sexual mutilation and other forms of torture, often using ethnic slurs and death threats.
france24.com, amnesty.org

Dam continues to cause tensions on the Blue Nile: Ethiopia has completed filling the reservoir of its huge dam on the Blue Nile river for a second year and the plant may start generating power in the next few months, a minister said on Monday, a move that has already angered Egypt and Sudan. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has been at the center of a regional dispute ever since Ethiopia broke ground on the project in 2011. Egypt and Sudan view the dam as a threat because of their dependence on Nile waters, while Ethiopia deems it essential for its electrification and development. To make matters worse, the Ethiopian and Egyptian governments still disagree on how, for example, the filling phase will be designed. The Egyptian government wants a slow pace, while the Ethiopian government wants the dam filled as quickly as possible so that many turbines produce electricity. Egypt’s President Sisi made it clear in March that for him, the Nile is a matter of national security – whether that would make war an option in the event of a water shortage is unclear. To avoid that, Egypt would be well advised to stop wasting vast amounts of water with the old flooding system. As of this month, farmers are getting an interest-free loan to invest in water-saving systems.
reuters.com, phys.org, tagesschau.de

– NUMBER –

The Tunisian city of Kairouan is currently the hottest city in Africa at 50 degrees Celsius.
maghreb-post.de

– QUOTE –

„Fifty fire starts at the same time – that’s impossible. We’ve known wildfires from time immemorial, with one, two sources of fire – but more than a dozen at the exact same time. There are criminals at work.“

Algerian Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud on the raging forest fires.
tagesschau.de

– AT LAST –

Forest elephants as climate protectors: Forest elephants, native to the forests of Central and West Africa, are making a significant contribution in the fight against the climate crisis. Fabio Berzaghi, a researcher at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences in France, explains that elephants enhance biodiversity and encourage tropical forests to store more carbon, sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The nutrient-rich dung of the gray giants contains tree and shrub seeds, which are thus distributed over long distances. This dung serves as food and shelter for countless small animals and is also a rich fertilizer for the forest floor.
wienerzeitung.at