Day: January 1, 2023

BUKAVU (DR Congo), Jan 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Mudslides killed at least 10 people at two makeshift mines in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after torrential rain, local officials said.

The disasters came after heavy rain overnight Thursday to Friday across the Fizi enclave in South Kivu province, said locals.

The mudslides hit two gold mining sites in the area.

“The provisional toll is 10 people dead, nine others injured, and missing people,” Aime Kaway, the administrator at Fizi, said, adding that it was difficult to know the exact number of missing.

“Most of the victims are artisanal miners and other persons who frequent the two mining sites,” he said.

Onesphore Kabandilwa, a local Red Cross official, whose teams were handling the burial of the victims, confirmed the toll of 10 people.

Search teams were still working to try to recover other bodies, he added.

Floods and landslides provoked by heavy rains often prove deadly in DR Congo.

In mid-December, floods caused by torrential rain killed more than 160 people in the capital Kinshasa, in the west of the country.

Source: Nam News Network

KAMPALA— At least nine people, including a 10-year-old boy, have died as crowds rushing to see a New Year’s firework display got stuck in a narrow corridor in a shopping mall near Uganda’s capital, police said.

People started pushing through a passage in the Freedom City Mall in Kampala just after clocks struck midnight, the police said on Sunday.

“Very many people got stuck as they were entering in large numbers to see fireworks. In doing so, many people suffocated to death. So far nine people are confirmed dead,” the police statement said.

People had been celebrating the New Year at the mall which is on a highway linking Kampala to Entebbe International Airport.

“Emergency responders arrived on the scene and transported the injured individuals to the hospital, where nine were confirmed dead,” police spokesman Luke Owoyesigyire said.

Owoyesigyire added that “rash” acts and “negligence” had led to the tragedy.

The celebrations to welcome in 2023 were the first in the East African country since restrictions linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and security issues were lifted.

Source: Nam News Network

Ugandan police are investigating a stampede that occurred at a New Year’s Eve event in Kampala and resulted in the deaths of at least nine people, including several children.

The deadly crush occurred outside the Freedom City Mall which hosted an event marking the New Year. According to police, at midnight, the master of ceremonies encouraged attendees to go outside and watch the fireworks display.

Lucas Owoyesigyire, is the deputy spokesman, Kampala Metropolitan Police.

“After the display ended, a stampede ensued resulting in the instant deaths of five people and injuries of several others. Emergency responders arrived on the scene and transported the injured individuals to the hospital, where nine were confirmed dead,” he said.

Haji Kimera, whose two grandchildren died in the stampede, spoke to VOA by phone.

“He says, the children, one had been promoted to grade seven and the other to grade six. He says, their father had taken them to Freedom City,” daid Kimera.

Millions of Ugandans joined the rest of the world to usher in 2023, the first time the New Year was being welcomed with large festivities after two years due to COVID-19.

Source: Voice of America

Libyan authorities said Sunday they have found 18 bodies buried in a mass grave in a former stronghold of the Islamic State group along the conflict-stricken North African nation’s coast.

The Missing Persons Authority said in a statement the bodies were unearthed in the Sabaa area of Sirte, a city in central Libya. The bodies were taken to a hospital, it added.

Sirte, the birthplace of former longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi, fell under the control of Islamic State militants between 2015 and 2016. The militants, along with al-Qaida, gained a foothold in oil-rich Libya amid the chaos that engulfed the country after the 2011 uprising and a NATO intervention in the conflict.

The militants were eventually driven out of the city in December 2016 by Libyan forces supported by the U.S. and allied with the U.N.-backed government in the capital Tripoli. Hundreds of alleged former Islamic State fighters remain incarcerated in Libyan prisons, many of whom are awaiting trial.

Since Gadhafi’s overthrow and killing, Libya has been split between rival authorities. Sirte is now controlled by forces loyal to military leader Khalifa Haftar based in the country’s east.

In its statement, the Missing Persons Authority said they collected samples of the dead bones in an effort to identify the bodies. Further details on the cause of death for those found were not provided.

Several mass graves have been uncovered across Libya recently. In October, officials said they found 42 bodies in a mass grave at a school site in Sirte.

In December 2018, the bodies of more than 30 men were discovered near Sirte, believed to be the corpses of a group of Ethiopian Christians whom Islamic State fighters executed in a video the group published years earlier.

In the western town of Tarhuna, hundreds of corpses have been uncovered across several graves after militia fighters loyal to Haftar retreated from the area in June 2020.

Source: Voice of America

At least 20 people have been killed in Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland in clashes between anti-government protesters and security forces over several days, according to a doctor at a public hospital.

For more than a week police and the military have been battling the protesters in Laascaanood, a town in Somaliland’s east which is disputed between Somaliland and neighboring Puntland, one of Somalia’s semi-autonomous regions.

Mohamed Farah, a doctor at Laascaanood Hospital, a public facility in Laascaanood, told Reuters at least 20 people had been killed and dozens injured. He said he had seen the bodies of victims brought into the facility.

Protesters are demanding that Somaliland cede control of the town to Puntland and also accuse security forces of failing to end insecurity in the town.

“Somaliland forcefully occupied Laascaanood and failed to secure it. We are demanding that they leave,” Adaan Jaamac Oogle, the spokesperson of the protesters told Reuters.

“We cannot tolerate continuing bloodshed of civilians.”

The police did not immediately respond to a call from Reuters requesting comment.

Somaliland broke away from Somalia in 1991 but has not gained widespread international recognition for its independence. The region has been mostly peaceful while Somalia has grappled with three decades of civil war.

Puntland’s Vice President, Ahmed Elmi Osman Karash, accused the security forces of violence.

“What is being done by the Somaliland army is a massacre of civilians,” he told Reuters by phone.

Mahad Ambaashe Elmi, a senior commander in the Somaliland army, did not return a Reuters call requesting comment.

Somaliland’s Minister of Information, Saleebaan Cali Koore, appealed to the protesters in a statement Saturday to stop their demonstrations and begin negotiations with the government.

Source: Voice of America