Ian Wafula
Africa security correspondent, BBC News, Nairobi

Image source, Reuters

The bodies of two UN peacekeepers killed in the disputed region of Abyei along South Sudan's border with Sudan have been flown back home.

The Ghanaian and Pakistani peacekeepers from the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (Unisfa) were killed in separate incidents following recent intercommunal clashes, according to the UN.

On Saturday, 52 people were killed including the Ghanaian peacekeeper when armed youth launched attacks in different parts of Abyei. The UN said another 64 people were seriously wounded in the process.

Later on Sunday, a convoy transporting some of those injured in Saturday's attack was ambushed killing the Pakistani peacekeeper.

A ceremony attended by the leaders of the nine chiefdoms of Abyei was in held in honour of the two before their bodies were flown home.

Unisfa said it condemned the attacks on their peacekeepers and that this could constitute a war crime under international law.

There have been continued clashes between local communities in Abyei over land and resources with fears that the ongoing war in Sudan could spill into the region.

A local resident told the BBC that there is tension following recent clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Babanusa, a town 260km (160 miles) north of Abyei.

He added that should either of the warring sides in Sudan advance to Abyei, they might clash with the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces personnel who have set camp in parts of the region.

Both Sudan and South Sudan have claimed the oil-rich Abyei but agreed on temporary administrative arrangements in a 2011 deal.

However, the two sides have been accused by human rights activists of going against the agreement.

Abyei currently remains under the protection of UN peacekeeping troops.

Image source, Reuters

The African Union (AU) has declared its "deep regret" over the decision this weekend by military regimes in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to pull out of the West African regional bloc, Ecowas.

Those three nations accused Ecowas of posing a threat to their sovereignty. They had all been founding members when Ecowas was set up almost 50 years ago.

In a statement on Tuesday from Moussa Faki Mahamat, the AU's commission chairperson, "calls on regional leaders to intensify the dialogue between the Ecowas leadership and the three aforementioned countries".

Nigeria had also rebuked Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger for leaving Ecowas, saying they were of letting their people down by quitting the group.

A 69-year-old man living in Gateshead is questioned over genocide and crimes against humanity.

Azeezat Olaoluwa
BBC News

Six students, three teachers and a bus driver have been kidnapped by unknown gunmen in south-western Nigeria.

In a statement posted online, the Ekiti state government said the victims were attacked in the town of Emure while returning from a road trip on Monday night.

State Governor Abiodun Oyebanji said the authorities are determined "to get the children and their teachers rescued", meanwhile residents are being urged to remain and share any information that could help the search.

It is not yet clear who is responsible or whether they have demanded a ransom.

Kidnapping for ransom has worsened in Nigeria in recent years with armed gangs targeting road travellers, students as well as residents in rural and urban areas across the country.

Earlier on Monday, about 50 civil society organisations issued a joint call on President Bola Tinubu to declare a state of emergency regarding the security situation. They said over 1,800 people had been abducted since the president assumed office in May last year.

Kalkidan Yibeltal
BBC News

Image source, Reuters

Close to 400 people have died in Ethiopia’s Tigray and Amhara regions due to drought-induced starvation, the country's state-appointed Federal Ombudsman Institute said on Tuesday.

The remarks contradict earlier statements from federal authorities that there had not been confirmation that "anyone has died of starvation in any region" in the country.

Deaths had previously been reported at local district levels but there had not been comprehensive data.

The institute said an assessment by its team of experts revealed that millions were impacted in the two regions and tens of thousands had already been displaced.

Thousands of children in the affected areas were not attending school, the institute added. The institute’s head, Endale Haile, told the BBC that the deaths occurred in the past six months.

In December, officials in the war-scarred Tigray region warned a famine crisis rivalling the one Ethiopia endured in the mid-1980s could be looming unless prompt measures were taken.

Federal authorities dismissed the possibility of famine - a sensitive word in Ethiopia - but admitted drought was affecting several areas.

The Ombudsman Institute has now advised government agencies to avoid wasting energy on terminology and work towards providing aid.

Last week, the federal government’s communication office said more than six million people requiring emergency humanitarian assistance because of drought in the next three months had been identified.

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Uganda's National Unity Platform (NUP) political party has filed a case with the high court in Kampala to compel security agencies to release 18 of its supporters who have been missing for nearly two years.

The supporters reportedly disappeared during the heated 2021 election period, when NUP leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine, ran for president.

The supporters' whereabouts are unknown, but their families and NUP party leaders believe that they were unlawfully arrested and are still being detained by security forces.

Last October, Uganda's official human rights body closed investigations into the disappearances, saying it had been unable to locate them.

The commission also said that it had been unable to verify some of the missing reports.

Ashley Lime
BBC News

Image source, AFP

A group of 13 Sudanese who had fled the war in Khartoum have been hospitalised following a cholera outbreak in northern Uganda's Adjumani district.

Four of them are confirmed to have cholera, local health official Henry Lulu confirmed.

Officials now plan to track down the estimated 82 people who came into contact with them for follow-up testing.

Cholera is a waterborne disease which causes severe diarrhoea, dehydration, lethargy and an erratic heartbeat. It can be fatal within hours of infection.

Uganda's latest wave of deadly cholera outbreaks began last July. Sudan declared numerous cholera outbreaks from last September onwards.

Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia are also fighting cholera.

• Find out more: Why is cholera still killing people?

Mansur Abubakar
BBC News, Abuja

Forty-eight civil society organisations in Nigeria call on President Bola Tinubu to declare a state of emergency regarding the country’s security situation.

The coalition held a press conference in Abuja on Monday.

Last week, 43 people were killed in two days of clashes in central Plateau state, while capital Abuja also witnessed a series of kidnappings some days before that.

Auwal Musa who spoke on behalf of the ciivil groups said 2,423 people have been killed in mass atrocities-related incidents while about 1,872 persons have been abducted between May 2023 when President Tinubu assumed office and 26 January this year.

“We are particularly concerned about the upsurge in abductions, noting that at least 230 incidents, in most of which multiple victims were involved, occurred within the first two weeks of January 2024 alone,” he said.

Abuja's police force recently launched a special squad to tackle kidnapping gangs.

The UK government has reportedly extradited business tycoon Yagnesh Mohanlal Devani back to Kenya to face charges over a jet fuel fraud.

The fuel scam, often known as the Triton scandal, was allegedly made through Mr Devani’s company, Triton Petroleum Ltd, in 2008.

Authorities said that Kenya risked losing about $50m (£40m) in the scam.

The Kenyan government has been seeking to bring Mr Devani back to Kenya for years after he fled in the wake of the scandal.

He was last week "quietly" extradited from Britain, charged in a Nairobi court then freed on bond, Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper reports.

In May 2020, the Court of Appeal in the UK dismissed his application seeking asylum in the UK, effectively allowing his extradition to Kenya to face 19 charges of fraud.

The case will be mentioned on 12 February for pre-trial.

Image source, Pelumi Nubi/Instagram

Nigerian travel content creator Pelumi Nubi is today beginning an attempt to drive from London to Lagos, a journey of more than 7,000km (4,340 miles).

From England, Ms Nubi will cross into France and Spain, before entering Africa through Morocco.

"After that, it's through the West Sahara desert, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and finally Nigeria, reaching Lagos," Ms Nubi said of her travel route.

While similar driving challenges have been done on the London-Lagos route before, Ms Nubi said she believed she was the first black woman to attempt the journey.

"But hey, this isn't about breaking records. It's about showing the world that 'impossible' is just a word," she said when she first announced the challenge last November.

Last week, Ms Nubi said that the trip had taken one year of planning and saving.

An avid traveller, Ms Nubi has visited 80 countries. She often showcases her travel exploits on her social media accounts.

Image source, Spokesperson of the Indian Navy/X

India's navy has rescued 19 Pakistani nationals after Somali pirates captured their fishing vessel off the coast of Somalia.

Eleven Somali pirates had boarded the Iranian-flagged fishing vessel Al Naeemi and taken all the crew members hostage, the navy said.

The responding navy officers "compelled the safe release of the crew and the vessel" after India's INS Sumitra navy patrol ship intercepted the hijacked fishing vessel, India's navy said on Tuesday.

The rescue of the Pakistanis was the second anti-piracy operation carried out by the INS Sumitra within 36 hours. They had hours earlier rescued 17 people that had been taken hostage by Somali pirates on another Iranian-flagged fishing vessel in the Gulf of Aden.

There are concerns about the surging attacks on vessels off Somalia's coast amid the recent wave of missile attacks by Houthi fighters in the Red Sea.

Evelin Uachave
BBC Monitoring

Image source, Indian Navy

Angola's state-owned oil company Sonangol has dismissed reports that a vessel targeted by Houthi fighters last week in the Gulf of Aden was part of its fleet.

The tanker with links to the UK was on fire for several hours last Friday in the Gulf of Aden after being hit by a missile fired by the Houthis.

The Iran-backed movement, based in Yemen, said it targeted the Marlin Luanda in response to "American-British aggression".

The dismissal came in response to reports by Angolan media outlets linking the Marlin Luanda vessel to Sonangol.

“Sonangol informs the public that the Marlin Luanda vessel, recently hit by a missile in the Red Sea, is not part of its fleet of company-owned or chartered vessels,” the firm said in a statement seen by the local media.

Marlin Luanda, operated on behalf of Singapore-based commodity trader Trafigura, flies the flag of the Marshall Islands.

Trafigura is one of the main suppliers of diesel and marine diesel to Angola.

It is also a shareholder in the Puma Energy company, which controls the Pumangol petrol stations in Angola.

Other shareholders in Puma Energy include Sonangol.

At least 22 people have been killed in a suspected jihadist attack on a Niger village, near the border with Mali, reports say.

A local official told AFP news agency that the attackers arrived in Motagatta village in the Tillaberi region on motorbikes on Sunday and started shooting people.

It is not clear who were behind the attack and the Niger junta is yet to comment about it.

But such killings are common in Niger where jihadist insurgencies have risen since 2015.

Nearly 40 soldiers were killed last year in separate attacks near the border with Burkina Faso.

Military leaders who carried out last year's coup justified their actions citing the poor security situation.

In December, the coup leader, General Abdourahamane Tiani, said the situation was "progressively normalising" after what he called the army's multiple successes in quelling unrest. But the attacks have continued.

French troops have left Niger after being ordered out by the country's military leaders.

Image source, Reuters

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) says there are “grounds to believe” that Sudan's warring military factions are committing serious crimes in the Darfur region.

Karim Khan on Monday told the UN Security Council that his office is collecting "a very significant body of material, information and evidence" indicating that Sudan's regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have committed genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression in Darfur.

The investigation by Mr Khan's office began in July last year, shortly after fighting erupted between Sudan's army and the RSF.

Darfur is one of the regions most impacted by the ongoing conflict.

More than half a million refugees have fled into Chad to escape the violence in the region.

Mr Khan also warned that the situation in Darfur is escalating and urged Sudan's authorities to cooperate with the ICC's investigations.

The UN and human rights groups have previously voiced concern following reports alleging that the RSF and allied forces have killed hundreds of the ethnically African Masalit people in West Darfur in ethnic cleansing attacks.

There are fears that the current war could deteriorate into a deeper conflict as was witnessed in the early 2000s, when more than 300,000 people were killed and millions displaced in Darfur, in a war that was marked by targeted ethnic cleansing attacks.

Image source, WHO Zimbabwe/X

Zimbabwe has launched a cholera vaccination campaign targeting more than two million people against the waterborne disease.

The current outbreak, which began early last year, has been linked to more than 400 deaths and over 21,000 suspected infections. About half of the cases involve children.

The vaccination campaign is being done house-to-house in collaboration with the UN agencies, and is targeting Zimbabweans aged one year or older.

Health authorities are giving priority to 26 districts considered to be the epicentres of the disease.

The southern Africa region has been battling a cholera epidemic since early last year.

The outbreak has resulted in more than 188,000 infections and over 3,000 deaths, mainly in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia, the UN's humanitarian agency, Ocha, says.

It accuses the military rulers of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger of not acting in good faith.

Image source, AFP

A court in Ghana has sentenced 12 people to life imprisonment after it found them guilty of killing an army officer, seven years ago.

They were part of 14 suspects who were accused of lynching Major Maxwell Mahama in May 2017, in Denkyira Obuasi area, sparking an uproar in the country.

The High Court in the capital, Accra, on Monday found the 12 guilty of counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and abetment of murder.

They include a local politician who was accused of rallying the community to attack the soldier while he was jogging.

The two other suspects were acquitted after the court found them not guilty.

The 32-year-old major was on duty in Denkyira Obuasi located in the country’s Central region when he was attacked by a mob over allegations that he was an armed robber. He was among soldiers deployed to the area to protect a local mine.

There was widespread outrage across the country when news of his death broke.

Following the incident, over 50 suspects were rounded up, out of which 14 were eventually screened for prosecution.

The government posthumously promoted him to the rank of major and gave him a state burial in Accra.

In 2019, authorities unveiled a statue of the slain soldier in Accra to serve as a national campaign against mob action.

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