Africa (except North Africa)

(Reuters) --- Armed assailants killed around 100 civilians in an overnight raid on a village in northern Burkina Faso, the government said on Saturday, as the region faces a worsening wave of jihadist violence.

The provisional death toll given by the government made it the country's deadliest attack in recent years.

The attackers struck during the night on Friday, killing residents of the village of Solhan in Yagha province bordering Niger. They also burned homes and the market, the government said in a statement.

NAIROBI, Jun 3 (NNN-KBC) – Kenya plans to boost labour exports, in order to enhance remittances from the diaspora, a senior government official said yesterday.

Simon Chelugui, cabinet secretary of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, told journalists in Nairobi, the number of Kenyans in the diaspora is estimated at four million and their remittances is below that of other African nations such as Egypt, Nigeria or Ghana.

(Reuters) --- Nigerian authorities said on Tuesday that about 200 children had been seized in the latest school kidnapping in its violent north but they ruled out securing their freedom by paying a ransom.

Police were trying to track the route the kidnappers had taken with the children, who were seized in a raid on an Islamic school in north-central Niger state on Sunday, a local government official told Reuters.

A warplane was also flying over the area to try to spot them, the official said.

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — An Ethiopian national working for an Italian charity was killed in the war-hit Tigray region on Saturday after he was “hit by a stray bullet”, according to his employer.

Negasi Kidane, from the Tigrayan city of Adigrat, had been employed by the International Committee for the Development of Peoples since 2016. The group is known by its Italian initials, CISP.

He is the ninth aid worker reported killed in Tigray since fighting broke out there nearly seven months ago.

(Reuters) --- At least 50 people were killed overnight in two attacks on villages in eastern Congo, in potentially the worst night of violence the area has seen in at least four years, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST) research group said on Monday.

The army and a local civil rights group blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist armed group, for raiding the village of Tchabi and a camp for displaced people near Boga, another village. Both are close to the border of Uganda.

30 May 2021; MEMO: With no food rations in sight, Ayen Madit, a 40-year- old mother of seven, survives on tree leaves and wild fruits as food insecurity worsen in the Northern Bhar El Ghazal region of South Sudan, reports Anadolu Agency.

UN agencies recently warned that 7.24 million South Sudanese are on the brink of catastrophe as food insecurity worsens because of flooding, conflicts, and the coronavirus.

(Reuters) --- West African leaders will discuss on Sunday how to respond to a coup in Mali, gathering in the Ghanaian capital Accra for a summit to be attended by Assimi Goita, who was named interim Malian president after leading the takeover last week.

The revolt has prompted sanctions warnings from foreign powers, which fear it will derail a promised transition back to democracy following another coup last August led by Goita, an army colonel.

(Reuters) --- Around 400,000 people need support or protection after fleeing a volcano eruption and a wave of aftershocks in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations said on Friday.

At least 31 people died when Mount Nyiragongo sent a wall of lava spreading towards the city of Goma on Saturday, destroying 3,000 homes along the way and cutting a major road used to bring aid to the strife-torn region. 

ORANGE FARM, South Africa (AP) — Spry and gray-haired, many dressed in their Sunday best or colorful African prints — and all sporting masks — dozens of South Africans aged 60 and over gathered at a government health clinic outside Johannesburg to get their COVID-19 shots.

Some looked at vaccine notifications on their mobile phones, others clutched pieces of paper, as the line moved along at a good pace. Eight at a time, they were ushered into a tent where they took seats distanced from each other.

GOMA (DR Congo), May 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The risk of further eruptions from volcano Nyiragongo led DR Congo authorities to order the evacuation of parts of the city of Goma Thursday, causing an immediate exodus of tens of thousands of people.

“Current data on seismicity and the deformation of the ground indicate the presence of magma under the urban area of Goma, with an extension under Lake Kivu,” the local military governor General Constant Ndima said in a broadcasted public address.