Africa

The death toll rose to at least 69 as firefighters, soldiers and civilian volunteers fought fires in forests across northern Algeria on Wednesday, in the latest forest fires to cover the Mediterranean. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared three days of national mourning starting on Thursday, and authorities say they…

Fifteen people have been killed in an attack in western Niger less than two weeks after 33 people were killed by suspected jihadists in the same area, officials said on Wednesday. The Interior Ministry said in a…

Amnesty International says women and girls in Tigray were raped and sexually abused by Ethiopian soldiers and their allies in an attempt to inflict lasting physical and mental harm. In a new report, the rights group says that stories of gang rape, sexual slavery and sexual mutilation amount…

Sudan will hand over longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court along with other officials called for the Darfur conflict, Foreign Minister Mariam al-Mahdi said on Wednesday. "The Cabinet decided to hand over wanted officials to the ICC," Mahdi was quoted as saying by state media. Bashir, who ruled Sudan with an iron fist for three decades before being ousted from popular protests in 2019, is charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. The UN says 300,000 people…

Nigerian security forces used excessive force and killed more than 115 people in a military attack on separatist agitators in the restless southeastern part of the country, the international human rights organization said on Thursday. Violence has flared up in Nigeria's southeastern states this year, claiming the lives of at least 127 police officers or members of the security services, according to police. About twenty police stations and election commission offices have been attacked, according to…

Pygmies, known for how unusually small they are, have maintained their way of life and continue to hunt in the rainforests of Central and West Africa as they have done for the past 5,000 years. Europeans referred to the local tribes as "pygmies" - a word meaning "dwarf" in Greek with a mythological reference - because humans had an average height of 120 centimeters (3.9 feet). There are currently about 120,000 pygmies in the world, most of them living in Cameroon's forest area near the Atlantic Ocean.…

On Tuesday, the East African country of Sudan took the first step towards joining the International Criminal Court. The country's cabinet's decision to join the Rome Statute is a step forward in the long-awaited trial of suspected war crimes and genocide suspects in the Darfur conflict, including former President Omar al-Bashir. However, the bill still needs to be ratified by a joint meeting of Sudan's sovereign council and cabinet. Together they function as an interim parliament. The Cabinet did not…

Khalid al-Mishri was re-elected chairman of Libya's top government for a four-year term on Tuesday. Al-Mishri won 73 of the 128 votes in the vote in the capital, Tripoli, Council spokesman Mohamed Nasser told Anadolu Agency (AA). He noted that al-Mishri's victory came "during the second ballot" in which he defeated his rival Salah Mito. Saeed Kula also ran for the position in the first round but received the least number of votes, forcing him out of the second round. Following his re-election,…

Eritrea is the only country on the African continent that has not yet started vaccinating its citizens against COVID-19 as part of a national campaign. According to national media reports, after the vaccination campaign started in Tanzania on July 28 and Burundi announced that it would also vaccinate itself, Eritrea is now the only country on the continent that has not planned a COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Although Tanzania and Burundi say "yes" to the vaccine with the help of the international…

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Salonga National Park, the largest in the country, was withdrawn on 19 July with Unescode from the World Heritage List in Danger where it had been listed since 1984. This decision rewards efforts to preserve this park from 36,000 square kilometers, considered the largest reserve of tropical rainforest in Africa. Pastor Cosma Wilungula, Director General of the Congolese Institute for Nature Conservation, is RFI's guest. .