MOGADISHU – Somalia on yesterday launched voter registration in the capital Mogadishu for the first time in over 50 years, a step towards universal suffrage ahead of presidential elections scheduled for 2026 in the volatile nation. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud pledged last year to end the complex clan-based indirect voting system that had been in...
SUMY – World leaders condemned a Russian missile strike on Ukraine on Sunday, one of the deadliest attacks in months, while United States (US) president Donald Trump called it a “horrible thing” and a “mistake”. Two ballistic missiles hit the centre of the northeastern city of Sumy, close to the Russian border, on Sunday morning,...
GAZA CITY – An Israeli air strike early yesterday heavily damaged one of the few functioning hospitals in Gaza, with the Israeli military saying it had targeted a Hamas “command and control centre” operating within the facility. Israel has produced no evidence of this claim. Since the outbreak of war, tens of thousands of Gazans...
JUBA – Almost 7.7 million people in South Sudan face crisis levels of hunger, the United Nations said yesterday, many located in the country’s restive northeast rocked by recent clashes. The deeply-impoverished nation has battled instability and insecurity since independence in 2011, with violence between forces allied to the president and his deputy further threatening...
OWENDO – Through dense equatorial rainforest the train steamed ahead along Gabon’s sole railway line, a vital yet unreliable cog shuttling minerals, people and timber — as well as the odd coffin — across the country. “We’re forced to take the train. It’s not a choice,” said Aaron Houchi, a radiologist comfortably sat in the...
ALGIERS – Algeria criticised the US yesterday after Washington reaffirmed its support for Morocco’s stance on the disputed Western Sahara, a territory largely controlled by Rabat, but claimed for decades by the Algiers-backed Polisario Front. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meeting his Moroccan counterpart Nasser Bourita Tuesday, “reiterated that the United States recognises Moroccan...
GAZA CITY – Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on a residential building in Gaza City killed at least 23 people yesterday, most of them children or women, as the military said it targeted a “senior Hamas” militant. The strike took place in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City, the agency’s spokesman Mahmud...
BANGKOK – A United States (US) academic, charged with breaking Thailand’s strict royal defamation laws, was granted bail yesterday, his lawyers said. But he remains in custody, pending an appeal to immigration authorities who earlier revoked his visa. Paul Chambers, who has spent over a decade teaching Southeast Asian politics at a Thai university, was...
WARSAW – Polish police yesterday announced the dismantling of a vast online network for images of child sexual abuse, an operation carried out in cooperation with 11 other European countries. The operation – codenamed FEVER – led to the arrest of 166 people across Europe, including 98 in Poland. “Among those arrested were people who...
NAIROBI – Somaliland’s opposition leader has won the presidency of the breakaway region of Somalia, election results released yesterday revealed. This outcome signalled a rejection of the establishment and a call for change. The territory’s decades-long push for international recognition is likely to be a top priority when Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, popularly known as “Irro”,...