Africa (except North Africa)

PORT LOUIS, March 9 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A Chinese-flagged fishing vessel with 16 crew members carrying 130 tonnes of oil has run aground off Mauritius, causing a minor spill, a minister said.

“Nothing to be worried about,” Sudheer Maudhoo, whose Blue Economy Ministry looks after maritime affairs, said, saying 310 metres of floating booms were controlling the leak.

Drone footage showed dark patches in the Indian Ocean waters near the “Lu Rong Yuan Yu 588” after it ran aground on Sunday.

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — A series of explosions at a military barracks in Equatorial Guinea killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 600 others on Sunday, authorities said.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said the explosion at 4 p.m. local time was due to the “negligent handling of dynamite” in the military barracks located in the neighborhood of Mondong Nkuantoma in Bata.

“The impact of the explosion caused damage in almost all the houses and buildings in Bata,” the president said in a statement, which was in Spanish.

PORT HARCOURT (Nigeria), March 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Nigerian army freed 14 crew members of a Chinese fishing boat from their pirate kidnappers on Saturday after a month in captivity, following a ransom payment, the military said.

The crew of six Chinese, three Indonesians, a Gabon national and four Nigerians were kidnapped in early February when the tuna fishing boat was attacked.

“A ransom of $300,000 was paid before we arrived to rescue them,” and bring them safely to Nigeria, Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Yahaya said.

PRETORIA, March 6 (NNN-AFRICANEWS) — South Africa’s Constitutional Court called on its president to apologise and withdraw pro-Israeli statements made in June, which had caused an outcry in a country strongly committed to the Palestinian cause.

Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng, a devout Christian, again caused a stir in December by calling the coronavirus vaccines “satanic”.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast voted on Saturday in a legislative election, with President Alassane Ouattara’s allies facing a combined challenge from opposition parties led by two of his predecessors.

The poll comes only months after Ouattara won a third term in an election marred by unrest that killed at least 85 people, the country’s worst violence since a 2010-2011 civil war.

Gusau (Nigeria), Mar 2 (AP-PTI) Hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls abducted last week from a boarding school in the northwestern Zamfara state have been released, the state's governor said Tuesday.

Zamfara state governor Bello Matawalle announced that 279 girls have been freed.

GUSAU, Nigeria (AP) — Hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls abducted last week from a boarding school in the northwestern Zamfara state have been released, the state’s governor said Tuesday.

Zamfara state governor Bello Matawalle announced that 279 girls have been freed. The government last week said 317 had been kidnapped.

Gunmen abducted the girls from the Government Girls Junior Secondary School in Jangebe town on Friday, in the latest in a series of mass kidnappings of students in the West African nation.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The United States is “gravely concerned by reported atrocities and the overall deteriorating situation” in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in the toughest statement yet from Washington on Ethiopia’s ongoing conflict.

27 Feb 2021; MEMO: Ethiopian officials and militia fighters are carrying out a systematic ethnic cleansing operation in the state of Tigray, according to a confidential US government report, Anadolu Agency reports.

The report obtained by the New York Times documents a land of looted houses and abandoned villages where tens of thousands of people have gone missing.

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) - Unidentified gunmen kidnapped 317 schoolgirls from the town of Jangebe in northwest Nigeria on Friday, police said, the second such kidnapping in little over a week.

A surge in armed militancy has led to a breakdown of security in the north of Africa’s most populous country, where school kidnappings are becoming endemic.