Africa (except North Africa)

JOHANNESBURG, Feb 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Custom officials at South Africa’s main international airport have seized hundreds of thousands of tablets of a drug some people claim could be a remedy against Coronavirus.

The South African Police Service (SAPS) said in a statement that “tablets suspected to be ivermectin” worth six million rand (nearly $400,000) had been seized at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo international airport in the past two weeks.

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine filed a supreme court challenge on Monday seeking cancellation of the results of a presidential election that handed victory to incumbent Yoweri Museveni, his party’s lawyer said.

Museveni, a former guerrilla leader who has led the East African country since 1986, was declared winner of the Jan. 14 vote with 59% of the vote, while Wine was given 35%.

“We want the poll cancelled and repeated,” said George Musisi, lawyer for Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP).

MOGADISHU, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- At least five people were killed and several others injured in a suicide car bombing in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Sunday evening, police and witnesses said.

The latest attack started at 5.00 p.m. when a car packed with explosives exploded at the Afrik Hotel near a busy security checkpoint near Aden Adde International Airport in Mogadishu.

A police officer who requested anonymity told Xinhua that al-Shabab stormed inside the hotel after the first blast went off outside the hotel.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Ethiopia’s government has privately told Biden administration staffers its embattled Tigray region has “returned to normalcy,” but new witness accounts describe terrified Tigray residents hiding in bullet-marked homes and a vast rural area where effects of the fighting and food shortages are yet unknown.

MAPUTO, Jan 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — At least 21 people were killed and hundreds of thousands affected by a super-storm that made landfall in Mozambique last week, causing heavy flooding across swathes of southern Africa, the United Nations said.

Tropical cyclone Eloise hit central Mozambique on Saturday, packing winds of up to 150 kilometres per hour and torrential rain.

ABUJA, Jan 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission has announced the return of 384 Nigerians from the United Arab Emirates.

The returnees are part of the 802 Nigerians stranded in Saudi Arabia that the Nigerian government had promised would be evacuated to Nigeria on Thursday and Friday.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs disclosed that the second batch will arrive in the country on Friday and would be received at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, by the ministry’s officials.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United States said all soldiers from Eritrea should leave Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region “immediately.”

A State Department spokesperson in an email to The Associated Press cited “credible reports of looting, sexual violence, assaults in refugee camps and other human rights abuses.”

“There is also evidence of Eritrean soldiers forcibly returning Eritrean refugees from Tigray to Eritrea,” the spokesperson said.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The Eritrean soldiers’ pockets clinked with stolen jewelry. Warily, Zenebu watched them try on dresses and other clothing looted from homes in a town in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region.

“They were focused on trying to take everything of value,” even diapers, said Zenebu, who arrived home in Colorado this month after weeks trapped in Tigray, where she had gone to visit her mother. On the road, she said, trucks were full of boxes addressed to places in Eritrea for the looted goods to be delivered.

BUJUMBURA, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- An extraordinary congress of Burundi's ruling party on Sunday elected former Senate President Reverien Ndikuriyo to succeed the incumbent Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye as the new party leader.

Ndikuriyo was elected as the Secretary General of the ruling National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD) in the political capital Gitega, Gitega province, central Burundi.

GUSAU (Zamfara, Nigeria), Jan 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Emir of Maru in the Nigerian state of Zamfara, Alhaji Abubakar Gado Maigari, has confirmed that 35 people were killed by unidentified gunmen during an attack on five villages in his emirate.

The Emir was briefing Governor Bello Matawalle who paid a sympathy visit to the affected villages.

The villages according to the Emir are Dutsin Gari, Asha-lafiya, Rayau, Munkuru, Mahuta and Talli.