TEHRAN – A blast, caused by a gas leak at an Iranian coal mine, has killed at least 51 people, state media said yesterday. This is one of the country’s deadliest work accidents in years. “The number of dead workers increased to 51” in the explosion at the Tabas mine in eastern Iran, the official...
N’DJAMENA – Severe flooding in Chad since July has claimed 503 lives and affected around 1.7 million since, the United Nations said on Saturday in its latest assessment of the disaster. The floods also destroyed 212,111 houses, flooded 357 832 hectares of fields and drowned 69,659 cattle, said the UN’s Office for the Coordination of...
N’DJAMENA – A Chadian opposition party claims its leader was abducted by intelligence agents, saying he was the movement’s latest figurehead to fall afoul of the country’s military rulers. Robert Gam, secretary general of Socialists Without Borders (PSF), was taken away after a meeting with other opposition members, the party’s general coordinator Mahamat Alifa Yousouf...
JOHANNESBURG – A woman died after being stuck overnight in one of scores of vehicles trapped in unusually heavy snowfall in South Africa with traffic still backed up for around 30 kilometres early yesterday, nearly two days after the first people were stranded, authorities said. Cars, buses and trucks became stuck in heavy snow on...
MORONI – Comoros president Azali Assoumani yesterday chaired a government cabinet meeting in his first public appearance since being wounded in a knife attack last week, government footage showed. Assoumani is seen in the video with a thick bandage on the left side of his forehead, smiling as he got into a car and arriving...
BAMAKO – A jihadist attack in the Malian capital targeting a military police training camp and a military airport left more than 70 dead and 200 wounded, security sources said yesterday. A security source speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that 77 people had been killed and 255 wounded in Tuesday’s attacks in Bamako....
LIBREVILLE – Gabon’s ex-president Ali Bongo Ondimba, who was overthrown in a coup last year, has said he is withdrawing from political life and asked for clemency for his imprisoned wife and son, who he said face “violence” and “torture”. Bongo ruled the oil-rich West African nation for 14 years until he was overthrown by...
PARIS – The main Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist group in Mali struck a forceful blow to the ruling junta when it hit highly sensitive military targets in the capital Bamako, underscoring its two-pronged strategy of territorial expansion and harassment, experts say. Targeting a military police barracks and a military airport, the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM)...
KYIV – Russia’s counter-offensive to retake territory captured by Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region has been “stopped”, a spokesman from Ukraine’s military administration set up in the area told AFP yesterday.Russia earlier this month said it had seized several villages back from Ukraine in the Kursk region, where Kyiv has held on to swathes...
GENEVA – The world remains far off track in tackling the climate crisis, but the UN voiced hope yesterday that artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies will help address the towering challenges. In a new report, the United Nations warned the goals laid out in the 2015 Paris climate accord, aiming to keep global temperature...