GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – At least 21 people were killed in two separate attacks on Christian church services Sunday 29 April, in northern Nigeria.
In a first attack at a university campus in Kano, Nigeria’s second largest city, gunmen killed at least 16 worshippers congregating at a lecture hall, using explosives and gunfire, as people attempted to flee. A chapel in the city of Maiduguri was later attacked, and five people, including the pastor, were killed.
No one claimed responsibility for the attacks but the attacks resembled others carried out by the Boko Haram sect, which has used bombs and guns in previous attacks in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north and in the country’s capital, Abuja. Earlier victims have included Christians, Muslims and government officials.
Officials claim the group has links with Al-Qaeda sympathizers including Islamist insurgents in northern Mali. In March Tuareg and islamists took control of northern Mali.
Links to other sources: The Guardian, CNN, Reuters, AP
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Rebel forces in Northern Mali advanced their control over vast areas in an effort to consolidate a Saharan state, taking advantage of the political upheaval left from last month’s military coup in the capital, Bamako.
The fighters are an alliance of Touareg and Islamic rebels seeking to establish a homeland for the Tuareg people. They said they were ready to negotiate with the government, according to Aljazeera 2 April. The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) said, after capturing the legendary town of Timbuktu, 900 kilometers northeast of Bamako, that they were not interested in enlarging the area under their control.
Meanwhile, in the capital, the coup’s leader Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo reinstated the 1992 constitution, just as a deadline for crippling sanctions was closing in.
Desire Ouedraogo, president of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), said he was satisfied with the announcement, according to Aljazeera. But Ecowas went ahead Monday with a travel ban on Sanogo and his group, while also imposing a diplomatic and financial embargo.
It is unclear from Sanogo’s statement about the constitution when elections will take place and whether he still considers himself president.
The rebel MNLA forces have been boosted since the beginning of 2012 with the arrival of manpower and material arriving from neighboring Libya, where Tuaregs had been volunteering in Muammar Khadhafi’s army.
A group, known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has been responsible for a number of kidnappings in Northern Mali. It is not clear what links the Tuareg rebels have with this or other Islamic groups.
Links to other sources: AllAfrica, CNN, The Globe and Mail, AP
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Candidates in the French presidential election suspended their campaigns following the killing Monday of four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse, as authorities began their search for the assassin.
The country was put on the highest level of alert as authorities began looking for what was probably a single gunman, also suspected in earlier fatal shootings of three soldiers of North African origin last week in nearby Montauban. Authorities are considering various main lines of investigation, including the involvement of a far-right extremist or an Islamist motive.
Bloomberg reports that three soldiers who had been dismissed for neo-Nazi activities from their base in Montauban in 2008 had been considered as potential suspects.
The attacks come at a time of increasingly xenophobic rhetoric in France’s centre and rightist political camps ahead of the first round of elections in April. President Nicolas Sarkozy recently said, “We have too many foreigners on our territory and we can no longer manage to find them accommodation, a job, a school.” Sarkozy is facing a serious challenge from extreme-right leader Martine La Pen, who has a support level of 17 percent in polls.
Campaigning will resume on Wednesday following the funeral of Monday’s victims.
Links to other sites: The Globe and Mail, BBC, TF1
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.
