High turnout in Egypt, with new Islamist group taking 24%
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Russians appear to be falling out of love with former leader Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party and turnout has been high, 62 percent, in Egyptian voting as parts of the country move into runoffs in a complex voting system.
Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party has enjoyed almost unrivaled popularity for the past 10 years, but early election results appear to show a change of heart by voters, with the party’s majority in parliament disappearing.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party, described by Business Week as “broad-based”, is expected to win the largest number of seats in the first elections since Hosni Mubarak’s long reign of power ended early in 2011. But the conservative, Islamist Salafi Nour party, a newcomer, secured 24 percent of early results, surprising observers with its strong showing. The country now faces runoffs in several voting areas; results from the country’s complex voting system will not be known until January 2012.
Links to other sites: Al Jazeera, Business Week, Guardian, Reuters
A huge blast Thursday 28 April at the popular Argana two-storey cafe in Marrakech’s Place Jamaâ El Fna, a Unesco World Heritage site, killed 14 people and injured another 20, according to initial figures released by the Moroccan government. Reuters says it was told initially that gas cannisters might have caused the lunchtime blast, but officials now appear to be giving more weight to the possibility that it was the work of Islamists.
Foreigners are reportedly among those killed, but officials had not yet confirmed this early Thursday evening.
Morocco has been relatively untroubled by terrorism since a bomb killed 45 people in 2003, but it has suffered by a drop in tourism, a key industry, from the global economic recession.
Links to other sites: AP/The Australian, The Independent, Reuters
Image ©2008 E Hockstein/UNHCR, on flickr.com
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Over 204,000 people have fled their homes in the northern suburbs of Mogadishu, Somalia to escape fighting since Islamist militants began their campaign eight weeks ago to gain control of the city, according to Geneva-based UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). Local groups working with the UN agency say that fighting has claimed 105 lives and 380 wounded in the past week.
