The court ordered the temporary suspension on Friday after a lawsuit was brought arguing that the site could endanger public health.

Senior US officials said the 50-bed unit at an air force base in Laikipia county would serve Americans who have been exposed to the virus but are still asymptomatic.

Kenya’s government has also confirmed plans to set up the facility, with Health Minister Aden Duale saying in a statement on Saturday that it was part of a wider push to strengthen emergency response systems.

The US officials said the site was expected to have become operational last Friday. A number of military aircraft flew in and out of Nanyuki late last week and over the weekend, in what diplomats and experts said appeared to be part of ongoing US preparations for the quarantine unit despite the court order.

A Reuters witness on Saturday said police and military had increased their presence on roads leading to the air base.

Footage obtained by Reuters on Monday showed a crowd of about 100 people standing about 4 km from the site of the planned facility, blowing whistles and some riding atop a pickup. Smoke could be seen rising from something burning on the road. Local residents put the number of protesters in the hundreds.

NTV Kenya and Citizen Kenya television channels showed footage of people standing by a wall outside the air base, with a tank stationed there and a handful of soldiers on guard.

Patrick Wahome, one of the organisers of the protest, told Reuters that they wanted the health facility to be shut down for good by Tuesday, June 9.

“Nanyuki is a very small town. The military personnel who serve the base… live with us. Our kids go to the same schools and that means if anyone is infected, we are all infected,” he said.

“We are picketing for our lives,” he added.

Cafe owner Patrick Maina said he was forced to shutter his business and described the situation as “very bad.”

“We haven’t opened since morning and it’s likely to be worse tomorrow,” he told Reuters.

A US military C-130 transport plane flew into Nanyuki as recently as Friday afternoon, according to the flight-tracking service Flightradar24.

Two Nanyuki residents also reported seeing military aircraft flying towards the base over the weekend, though Reuters was unable to confirm if they were US aircraft.

An unknown number of students were also injured at ​Utumishi Girls’ Academy Senior School in Gilgil in ​Nakuru County, the Gilgil Police Station said in ⁠a report seen by Reuters. The cause of ​the fire was not known, it said.

Footage aired by ​Citizen Television showed broken window panes and smoke-stained walls.

Kenya has a long history of school fires, with more than 60 cases ​of arson in public secondary schools recorded in 2018 ​alone, according to government data. Many of the fires have been ‌set ⁠by students protesting harsh discipline and poor conditions, researchers have found.

Masoud Mwinyi, a senior police commander, told reporters at the school that 50 officers were combing ​areas around the ​school for ⁠students who may have fled when the fire broke out.

“Of that shock and fear ​and anxiety, many people went out, and ​it ⁠was at night,” he said.

In 2024, a fire killed 21 students at a primary boarding school in nearby ⁠Nyeri ​County. The cause of that fire ​has not been conclusively established.

“The authorities need to bring us vaccines,” the 26-year-old woman told AFP.

But no vaccine or treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola responsible for the vast central African country’s 17th outbreak of the disease, believed to have already killed 204 people.

Already suspicious of the Congolese state following decades of neglect and conflict, many in the outbreak’s epicentre in the northeastern Ituri province are split between criticism of the government’s response and denial of the disease’s very existence.

Gold-diggers and hawkers criss-cross mineral-rich and conflict-torn Ituri on the regular. Mud-covered motorbikes of travelling Congolese are a regular sight in Mongbwalu, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Uganda and just 200 kilometres away from unstable South Sudan.

In the space of several weeks, the outbreak has spread to several provinces nearby and on to Ugandan soil, with the World Health Organization declaring the epidemic an international emergency.

Of the 322 people suspected to have contracted Ebola in Mongbwalu — where many of the outbreak’s first cases were recorded — 88 have died, according to the latest toll from the authorities.

In the local hospital, a modest building nestled within the hillside town’s trees and high grass, healthcare workers are rinsing both floor and walls with a chlorine solution.

All are clad from head to toe in hazard suits with facemasks and goggles, to guard against a disease spread through close physical contact and bodily fluids.

But handwashing is done in plastic buckets — a sign of the tardiness of the response to an outbreak many fear could be among the worst in the virus’s history.

Local aid groups are on the ground, while medical charity Doctors Without Borders has loaned Mongbwalu’s hospital tents to isolate suspected victims in.

Past Ebola outbreaks have sparked violent incidents on the part of locals either wary of the state’s response or sceptical of the disease. Some believed that the latest epidemic was of a “mystical malady”, a common belief in some remote areas of the DRC.

“At the beginning, people believed it was a coffin affair,” said Jonathan Imbalapay, a civil society leader in Mongbwalu.

The first suspected case was identified in Bunia, the Ituri provincial capital. After the man’s death, the victim’s family brought the body back to Mongbwalu.

But the 80-kilometre journey on the eastern DRC’s infamously rickety and bumpy roads damaged the coffin, exposing the Ebola-ridden corpse to the world.

Traditional leaders and some locals wanted to burn the compromised casket.

After tests in a provincial laboratory failed to pinpoint Ebola as the source, the disease and accompanying psychosis were both allowed to spread in Mongbwalu.

It was only when samples arrived at the biomedical research laboratory in the capital Kinshasa — nearly 1,800 kilometres away as the crow flies — that the Ebola outbreak was confirmed.

Adam Hussein, a 35-year-old representative for Mongbwalu’s traditional faith healers, fretted about Ebola denial and called on everyone to take precautions.

“I worry about those who say that this disease is invented,” he said.

The previous figures from the epidemic in the country’s east, which the World Health Organization has declared an international health emergency, gave a total of 91 dead out of 350 suspected cases.

No vaccine or treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola behind the latest outbreak of the deadly disease, which has killed more than 15,000 people in Africa in the past half century.

“We have recorded roughly 131 deaths in total and we have around 513 suspected cases,” Samuel Roger Kamba told Congolese national television overnight.

He however cautioned that the toll was an estimate and further research was needed to confirm whether all 131 suspected deaths were indeed linked to Ebola.

The outbreak’s epicentre is in the northeastern Ituri province on the border with Uganda and South Sudan, whose status as a gold-mining hub leads to people regularly crisscrossing the region.

The virus has already spread into neighbouring provinces, as well as beyond the DRC’s borders.

Suspected cases have been reported in the commercial hub of Butembo in neighbouring North Kivu province, some 200 kilometres away from the epidemic’s ground zero, Kamba said, without giving further details.

Another case has been recorded in Goma, a key provincial capital currently in the hands of the Rwanda-backed M23 militia.

“Unfortunately, the alert was slow to circulate within the community, because people thought it was a mystical illness, and so, as a result, the sick were not taken to the hospital,” Kamba said.

As few samples have been able to be tested in laboratories to date, the assessments are based mainly on suspected cases.

The WHO said the outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo virus, does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency but that countries sharing land borders with the DRC are at ​high risk for further spread.

The UN health agency said in a statement, that 80 suspected deaths, eight laboratory-confirmed ​cases and 246 suspected cases had been reported as of Saturday in the DRC’s Ituri ⁠province across at least three health zones, including Bunia, Rwampara and Mongbwalu.

International spread documented, WHO says

The DRC health ​ministry had said on Friday that 80 people had died in the new outbreak in the eastern province.

The 17th outbreak ​in the country, where Ebola was first identified in 1976, could in fact be much larger, given the high positivity rate of the initial samples and increasing number of suspected cases being reported, the WHO said.

The outbreak is “extraordinary” as there are no approved Bundibugyo ​virus-specific therapeutics or vaccines, unlike for Ebola-Zaire strains, it said. All but one of the country’s previous outbreaks were caused ​by the Zaire strain.

The DRC-Uganda outbreak poses a public health risk to other countries, with some cases of an international spread ‌already documented, ⁠the agency said, advising countries to activate their national disaster and emergency-management mechanisms and undertake cross-border screening and screening at main internal roads.

In Uganda’s capital, Kampala, two apparently unrelated laboratory-confirmed cases, including one death, were reported on Friday and Saturday, from people travelling from the DRC, the WHO said.

A laboratory-confirmed case was also reported in the DRC capital, ​Kinshasa, from a person returning ​from Ituri, the WHO ⁠said.

Bundibugyo virus-disease contacts or cases should not travel internationally, unless as part of a medical evacuation, the WHO said.

The agency advised immediately isolating confirmed cases and monitoring contacts daily, ​with restricted national travel and no international travel until 21 days after exposure.

At the ​same time, the ⁠WHO urged countries not to close their borders or restrict travel and trade out of fear, as this could lead to people and goods making informal border crossings that are not monitored.

The DRC’s dense tropical forests are a natural reservoir ⁠for the ​Ebola virus.

The often-fatal virus, which causes fever, body aches, vomiting and ​diarrhoea, spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected persons, contaminated materials or persons who have died from the disease, according to ​the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

It was a strike that Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu described as “a significant example of effective collaboration in the fight against terrorism.”

“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield. Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump said on Truth Social, without disclosing the exact location of the operation.

In a statement posted on X, Tinubu said early assessments confirmed the elimination of al-Minuki — also known as Abu-Mainok — along with several of his lieutenants, during a strike on his compound in the Lake Chad Basin.

Tinubu said Nigerian forces worked closely with their U.S. counterparts in what he called a daring joint operation that dealt a heavy blow to the ranks of the Islamic State.

Al-Minuki, a Nigerian national, was designated a “specially designated global terrorist” by the Biden administration in 2023, according to the U.S. Federal Register.

Trump, who has previously accused Nigeria of failing to protect Christians from militants in the northwest, thanked the Nigerian government for its partnership in the operation.

Nigeria denies discriminating against any religion, saying its security forces target armed groups that attack both Christians and Muslims.

The U.S. carried out strikes targeting Islamic State-linked militants in Nigeria in December. Since then, Washington has deployed drones and 200 troops to provide training and intelligence support to the Nigerian military against Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked insurgencies that are spreading across West Africa.

The U.S. forces were operating in a strictly non-combat role, Nigerian military officials said earlier this year.

Three people from the cruise ship have died, one of them in Johannesburg after she was transferred on a commercial flight from the Atlantic island of Saint Helena.

Another passenger, a British national, was evacuated separately and is in a Johannesburg hospital.

“The preliminary tests show that, indeed, this is the Andes strain,” South Africa’s health minister Aaron Motsoaledi told a parliament committee.

“And it happens to be the only strain out of the 38 that is known to cause human-to-human transmission.

“But as we said, we want to repeat again, such transmission is very rare and only happens due to very close contact between people.”

WHO has said there are two confirmed and five suspected cases of the virus.

South African authorities are tracing nearly 90 people who were on the flight that transported a 69-year-old Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg after her husband, 70, died of the virus on the ship.

She had left the ship at Saint Helena, a remote island in the South Atlantic, with “gastrointestinal symptoms” on April 24.

She died at the emergency department of a Johannesburg hospital on April 26 after her condition deteriorated during the flight, the World Health Organization said.

“We need to know who were the people who were in contact with this lady,” Motsoaledi said.

Besides the plane passengers, authorities were tracing people at the airport where she arrived and at the hospital where she was admitted, he said.

The South African-based carrier Airlink that operated the flight that transported the woman told AFP Tuesday that 82 passengers and six crew were on board the April 25 flight.

Attacks continued on Sunday, a day after an al Qaeda affiliate and Tuareg rebels carried out one of the largest coordinated attacks in the country in recent years, as gunfire rang out in a garrison town near Mali’s capital, a Reuters witness said.

The United Nations called for an international response to violence and terrorism in the West Africa Sahel region following Saturday’s large-scale assaults.

Panel exports surged 42.2% to 1.75 million metric tons in March, equivalent to 13.3% of volumes in all of 2025. The shipments were valued at $3.61 billion, up 67% from a year earlier and 125% from February, Chinese customs data showed.

Countries in Southeast Asia and Africa rushed to import panels ahead of expected price increases due to an end to China’s export tax refunds on April 1, with the surge amplified by disruption to energy supplies due to the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, analysts said.

“Silver prices fell from an all-time high in January and drove production costs lower, helping increase production and address demand ahead of a price increase from April,” said Marius Mordal Bakke, who heads solar research at consultancy Rystad Energy.

Investors are betting on renewable energy stocks in China, the dominant maker of solar gear, on expectations that the war will boost global demand for renewables.

READ MORE: Solar push helps Pakistan temper Gulf energy shock

Jing Yang, director at Fitch Ratings, expects China’s solar exports to drop significantly in April from March, but said 2026 exports could be supported by incremental demand “due to elevated oil prices and energy security concerns.”

S&P in February had projected China’s 2026 solar exports to remain flat-to-slightly down versus 2025 because of weaker global demand before the Iran war.

Surge LED by Philippines, democratic republic of Congo

Import duties on Chinese panels in countries including India and the U.S. have blunted demand there, shifting flows to markets such as Southeast Asia and Africa.

“The structural change in China’s solar product exports has been an ongoing trend, against the background of expanding overseas manufacturing capacity of solar modules due to rising U.S. trade barriers against Chinese solar products,” Yang said.

Southeast Asia’s imports jumped 267% annually and 203% from February to $673.3 million in March, while Africa’s March imports surged 238% annually and 211% from February to $438.28 million.

Imports by the Philippines, which is targeting faster solar additions through 2030, nearly quadrupled from a year earlier to 109,513 tons valued at $228 million.

In Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has one of the world’s lowest rates of electrification, saw March shipments soaring to 21,370 tons worth $62.73 million from just 1,352 tons a year earlier.

Ashuza Achille, head of business development at Kinshasa-based GoShop Energy, said he had stockpiled ahead of the expected price hike in China to supply increasing demand from small businesses and rural residents.   Resellers buying solar panels have increased to more than 1,000 from 80 in 2022, he said.

“I also have customers from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo who come to DRC. They cross the border, pick up solar panels and then go back to execute their projects.”

The discussions underscore the legal hurdles facing Afghans who fled the Taliban after U.S. immigrant visa processing for Afghan nationals was effectively halted, leaving them in limbo more than four years after the U.S. withdrawal from Kabul.

Shawn VanDiver, founder and president of #AfghanEvac, a coalition of veterans and advocacy groups, told Reuters that U.S. officials had briefed him about the plan to resettle the Afghans in Congo, which he described as unacceptable, partly because of chronic insecurity in the central African country.

READ MORE: China urges Pakistan, Afghanistan to resolve tensions via talks, not force

The Afghans are housed at Camp As Sayliyah, a former U.S. Army base in Qatar, where they were transferred to complete immigrant visa processing for entry into the United States. Some are relatives of U.S. citizens or worked for a U.S.-funded organization during the 20-year war.

But that processing ground to a halt after the Trump administration took office in January 2025.

Last June, the Trump administration included Afghanistan on a list of 12 countries subject to a travel ban, with a narrow exemption for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) for Afghans who served alongside troops and diplomats.

READ MORE: Over 1.47mn Afghans ‘repatriated’, as govt rules out further extensions

In November, Washington stopped immigrant visa processing for all Afghan nationals following the deadly shooting of two U.S. National Guard members by an Afghan former CIA-backed paramilitary unit member.

A federal judge ruled in February that the ban on Afghan SIV visa processing was illegal, but processing is effectively at a standstill, according to VanDiver.

#AfghanEvac said in a statement on Tuesday that the 1,100 Afghans had been vetted for resettlement.

A State Department spokesperson said in an email late on Tuesday that resettling the Afghans in a third country would be a positive solution that would give them a chance to start a new life outside of Afghanistan. It did not respond directly to a question about whether Congo was among the countries under consideration.

A Congolese government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The New York Times first reported on the effort to resettle the Afghans in Congo.

Afghans unlikely to accept Congo resettlement, advocate says

Congo has experienced decades of conflict and is currently fighting a Rwanda-backed rebel movement that made major incursions in the east last year.

That makes it unlikely the Afghans will accept resettlement there, VanDiver said, adding that the U.S. could potentially use their refusal as justification for sending them back to Afghanistan.

“I worry that this is just a way for State to wash their hands of these folks, many of whom are women, children, and family of U.S. military, that will ultimately result in them becoming stateless or having to go back to certain death in Afghanistan,” VanDiver said.

The Trump administration had previously sought to resettle the Afghans in the southern African country of Botswana, VanDiver said, describing that country as a more viable potential destination.

The initial plan to send the Afghans to Botswana has not previously been reported. Botswana’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The State Department did not comment on whether it had tried to resettle the Afghans there previously.

Plans to send the group to Botswana ultimately fell through, according to VanDiver, after the country objected to a new U.S. requirement that its citizens seeking to enter the U.S. post a $15,000 visa bond.

The brutal war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which enters its third year on Wednesday, has created what aid groups say is now the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Wadephul thanked donors for their pledges. “They help to alleviate the suffering of the people in Sudan, they help to save lives, and they show that this conflict has not been forgotten,” he said.

With development spending by established donors increasingly squeezed, the conference was aimed at throwing a spotlight back on Sudan. The global focus has recently been diverted towards the longer-running war in Ukraine and the conflict in Iran.

Nigeria’s Air Force said it had killed Boko Haram militants in the Jilli axis in Borno state, but in a statement released to Reuters on Sunday it did not mention hitting a market. It did not respond to further requests for comment.

The government of the neighbouring Yobe state later said in a statement that an air strike on the area had been conducted near a market that people were attending.

“Some people from Geidam LGA (local government area) bordering Gubio LGA in Borno state who went to the Jilli weekly market were affected,” said Brigadier General Dahiru Abdulsalam, military adviser to the Yobe state government.

He gave no further details.

The strike occurred in a village in Yobe on the border with Borno, the heartland of a long-running insurgency that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions more.

Lawan Zanna Nur Geidam, the councillor and traditional head of Fuchimeram ward in Yobe’s Geidam district told Reuters that those injured were being taken to hospitals in Yobe and Borno.

“It’s a very devastating incident at Jilli Market. As I’m speaking to you, over 200 people have lost their lives from the air strike at the market,” he said in a telephone interview.

The attacks, spanning two neighbouring states of Kebbi and Niger, have hit at least 10 villages, according to clergymen and a humanitarian report seen by AFP.

According to a situation report citing three local humanitarian sources, including a health facility and a community organising group, 20 deaths were recorded in a Tuesday attack in Erena, in Shiroro local government area of Niger state.

A separate military security report said the attackers were “bandits” with “sophisticated arms” who “invaded (a) military camp”.

Police confirmed the Shiroro attack, adding “two vigilante members and a driver from the joint security team” were killed.

Shiroro district has persistently been terrorised by local criminal groups known as “bandits” and by jihadists.

The two are increasingly forging alliances, raiding and displacing communities.

In neighbouring Kebbi, a clergy member said he could confirm that 24 had been killed “but from the reports we are getting today there are more than 40 killed”.

Another Christian leader also gave a toll of around 40.

“They killed everybody in sight, they killed Christians, Muslims and traditional worshippers,” said the first clergy, asking not to be named for security reasons.

“They killed indiscriminately,” he said, adding they burnt churches, houses of Muslims, sheep and cattle, as well as food barns.

He said the attackers had been rampaging through the area “for the last three days”.

They comb the surrounding bushes where villagers would ordinarily hide during attacks “and hunt around for those who were hiding in the bush and shoot them down”, the clergyman said.

“They were not leaving anything, they were not taking anything. They were to kill and destroy.”

At least 500 people have fled and are being sheltered in churches and schools in Yauri town in Kebbi state.

“People can’t even go back to bury their dead,” he said. No group has immediately claimed responsibility, but police blamed a local jihadist group known as Mahmuda for the attacks in Kebbi.

Mahmuda group, active in northwest Nigeria, is affiliated with Mahmud al-Nigeri, a senior official in the Ansaru jihadist group.

The three blasts, which struck on Monday evening, came after an attack on a military post overnight Sunday to Monday, which authorities blamed on suspected militants.

Combined with the attack on the military position the evening prior and a mosque bombing in December, the assaults have wrecked a peaceful stretch in the city, which had become a relative oasis of calm as Nigeria’s long-running insurgency was pushed to the rural hinterlands.

Fighters from Boko Haram and rival Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have recently stepped up attacks in northeastern Nigeria.

Their 16-year campaign to establish a caliphate in the country has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced around two million.

String of Nigeria suicide attacks kill at least 18

“Preliminary investigation reveals that the incidents were carried out by suspected suicide bombers,” police spokesman Nahum Kenneth Daso said in a statement.

“Regrettably, a total of twenty three (23) persons lost their lives, while one hundred and eight (108) others sustained varying degrees of injuries,” he added.

An AFP reporter at a city hospital on Monday evening saw dozens of wounded people seeking treatment, as well as multiple bodies covered by sheets on the sidewalk outside.

The attackers struck the city’s main market, the gate of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital and an area around the city’s Post Office flyover.

Mala Mohammed, 31, who escaped the market blast said he initially heard two explosions and saw panicked people running.

“At that moment, we were not sure what had happened. But after about two or three minutes, other people who were running along the road started shouting that it was a bomb at the market entrance.

“Many of them ran toward the Post Office area because the market entrance and the Post Office are not far apart. Unfortunately, as they were running towards Post Office, the person who had the explosive device ran into the crowd while people were still trying to escape,” said Mohammed.

‘Barbaric’ attacks

Police said in the early Tuesday morning statement that “normalcy has been fully restored in the affected areas” and that security forces have increased their “presence and surveillance across Maiduguri and its environs to prevent any further occurrences”.

Borno State Governor Babagana Zulum called the apparent bombings “barbaric” and said “the recent surge in attacks is not unconnected with intense military operations in the Sambisa forest,” a known militant stronghold.

The earlier attack was launched around midnight Sunday into Monday, on a Nigerian military post in Ajilari Cross district, a southwestern suburb of Maiduguri and just a few kilometres (miles) from the city’s airport.

That same evening there was an attack in the Damboa local government area, south of Maiduguri.

The strikes targeted the markets of Abu Zabad and Wad Banda in West Kordofan state — part of the resource-rich Kordofan region that is currently the fiercest battlefield in the nearly three-year war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

A doctor at Abu Zabad hospital, one of the few medical facilities still serving the area, said two drones struck the markets on Saturday, injuring 59 people.

Speaking via a Starlink connection and requesting anonymity, the doctor said 30 of the wounded remain receiving treatment. The two towns lie roughly 15 kilometres (9 miles) apart.

A resident of Abu Zabad town, Hamad Abdullah, said he helped bury 20 people on Saturday following what he described as an army drone strike on the town’s market.

“Four of them were my relatives who worked in the market,” he told AFP.

A military source rejected the accusations, telling AFP that the “armed forces do not bombard civilian areas”.

The pan-African body’s head, Mahamoud Ali Youssouf called “for restraint, urgent de-escalation and sustained dialogue”.

Israel and US launch attacks on Iran, deepening regional crisis

“Further escalation risks worsening global instability, with serious implications for energy markets, food security, and economic resilience – particularly in Africa, where conflict and economic pressures remain acute.”

Cyclone Gezani made landfall on Tuesday, slamming into the country’s second-largest city, Toamasina, with winds reaching 250 kilometres (155 miles) per hour.

The National Office for Risk and Disaster Management (BNRGC) said it recorded 20 deaths, many after houses had collapsed.

Fifteen people were missing and at least 33 had been hurt, it said, updating earlier tolls.

Drone footage shared by BNRGC on social media showed major flooding in the east coast city of 400,000 people, about 220 km northeast of the capital Antananarivo, with roofs ripped off buildings and trees uprooted.

There had been massive damage in the Atsinanana region around the city, the authority said, adding that post-disaster assessments were still under way.

“It’s total chaos: 90 percent of house roofs have been blown off, entirely or in part,” said the head of disaster management at the Action Against Hunger humanitarian group, Rija Randrianarisoa.

“The roads are completely inaccessible because of trees on the ground, sheet metal,” he told AFP.

The cyclone weakened on landfall but continued to sweep across the island, posing the risk of flooding.

A Toamasina resident told AFP by telephone late Tuesday that the winds had collapsed solid walls. “It’s monstrous,” the resident said.

The country’s new leader Colonel Michael Randrianirina, who seized power in October, was in the city on Wednesday to assess the situation.

The CMRS cyclone forecaster on France’s Reunion island confirmed Tuesday that Toamasina had been “directly hit by the most intense part” of the storm.

Libyan news agency LANA said the chopper went down overnight near an airbase in the Kufra region about 60 kilometres north of the border between Libya and Chad.

The aircraft was attempting to evacuate a soldier who had been involved in a road accident in the desert, LANA said.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known and it was unclear what happened to the injured soldier.

Libyan media reports said two foreign nationals were among those on board who were killed, but this was not confirmed by authorities.

READ MORE: Black box recovered from Libyan general’s crashed plane

The Matan al-Sarra airbase lies in an area under the control of Libya’s Benghazi-based eastern administration led by military strongman Khalifa Haftar, but authorities in the east did not comment on the crash.

Libya remains split between the eastern administration and a UN-backed government in the west led by Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah. The LANA news agency is under the control of western authorities.

Libya has struggled to recover from chaos that erupted following a 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled and killed longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

Jonas Mbambo, a spokesperson for the presidency, confirmed that until a formal application is submitted and the prescribed statutory process is completed, “no transaction can be recognised or considered valid”.

French oil major TotalEnergies and Brazil’s Petrobras said on Friday they had each acquired a 42.5 percent stake in the PEL104 exploration licence offshore Namibia, as both firms look to develop oil in one of the world’s last exploration frontiers. The acquisition, from Maravilla Oil and Gas and Eight Offshore Investments Holdings, marks an expansion of Total’s holdings in the southern African country, where it hopes to be the first to produce oil by the end of the decade.

In a statement on Sunday, the Ministry of Industries, Mines and Energy said it was not notified of the developments, as required by law, and was told about the planned announcement of the deal only “a few minutes” before its release.

“The government makes it clear that in accordance with the law, any transfer, assignment, or acquisition of participating interests in petroleum licenses in Namibia must obtain prior approval of the minister,” the statement said.

Saturday’s assault in the Kauru district highlights persistent insecurity in the region, and came days after security services rescued all 166 worshippers abducted in attacks by gunmen on two churches elsewhere in Kaduna.

A statement by the Catholic Diocese of Kafanchan named the kidnapped clergyman as Nathaniel Asuwaye, parish priest of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Karku.

Attacks in the region have drawn the attention of US President Donald Trump, who has accused Nigeria’s government of failing to protect Christians, a charge Abuja denies. US forces struck what they described as terrorist targets in northwestern Nigeria on December 25.

Rights group Amnesty International said in a statement on Sunday that Nigeria’s security crisis was “increasingly getting out of hand”.

A staff-monitored programme is an informal agreement between a country and the IMF that can open the door to financial support from the Fund, help restart one that has gone off track, or enable repeat access to emergency assistance.

George Guvamatanga, a senior Finance Ministry official, told Reuters that Zimbabwe’s authorities were aiming for a 10-month staff-monitored programme starting next month “if all processes can be completed in time”.

“The programme is to consolidate current fiscal and monetary policy reforms,” he said.

An SMP does not entail financial assistance or endorsement by the IMF’s Executive Board.

“The SMP is intended to establish a credible track record that supports the authorities’ re-engagement efforts and complements their broader strategy toward arrears clearance and debt restructuring, including eventual access to external concessional financing,” said IMF mission chief Wojciech Maliszewski in a statement.

Decades of hyperinflation

Zimbabwe, which has endured decades of hyperinflation, currency volatility, and dependence on informal dollarized markets, has had previous staff-monitored programmes. The last one launched in May 2019 but was abandoned after the nation failed to stick to the lender’s recommendations.

The Ministry of Finance has pointed to recent progress in the country’s macroeconomic backdrop.

In January, the ministry said domestic currency inflation reached a milestone at the start of the year, with annual price growth slowing to 4.1%, while U.S. dollar inflation fell to 1% year-on-year.

Data showed that by December 2025, the government had accumulated $1.2 billion in foreign asset reserves to back the Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG) currency, introduced in 2024 to restore monetary stability.

But in order to secure much-needed fresh financing from international partners, Zimbabwe has to clear its arrears.

Zimbabwe has been accumulating external arrears to its official creditors since the early 2000s, according to an October report by the IMF, which estimated arrears at $7.4 billion.

The IMF, whose financing serves as an anchor for funding from other sources such as the World Bank, has said it is unable to give the Southern African country a funded programme until it clears its external arrears.

Kepler-Karst Law Firm, a legal adviser to Zimbabwe, said the agreement on a staff-monitored programme was designed to bolster macroeconomic stability and establish a policy reform record.

“This agreement serves as a critical step toward arrears clearance and debt resolution,” the firm said in a statement.

The public prosecutor’s office said forensic experts had been dispatched to Zintan in northwest Libya, where he was shot dead, adding that efforts were underway to identify suspects.

“The victim died from wounds by gunfire,” the office said in a statement, adding that investigators were looking to “speak to witnesses and anyone who may be able to shed light on the incident”.

Marcel Ceccaldi, a lawyer who had been representing Seif al-Islam, told AFP he was killed by an unidentified “four-man commando” who stormed his house on Tuesday.

The head of the Presidential Council, a transitional body supposed to represent all of divided Libya under a UN agreement, urged “political forces, the media and social actors to show restraint in public statements and to avoid incitement to hate”.

READ MORE: Son of Libya longtime ruler Gaddafi dead

“We call on all political forces to wait for the results of the official investigation,” a statement by Mohamed al-Menfi said, referring to Seif al-Islam as a “presidential candidate”.

The younger Gaddafi, 53, had been seen by some as his father’s successor.

Menfi added that escalation could “undermine efforts at national reconciliation and the holding of free and fair elections”.

Libya has struggled to recover from chaos that erupted after a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 overthrew Muammar Gaddafi.

It remains split between a UN-backed government based in Tripoli and an eastern administration backed by Khalifa Haftar.

Seif al-Islam was arrested in November 2011 in southern Libya following a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity.

A Tripoli court later sentenced him to death in 2015 after a speedy trial, but he was granted amnesty.

In 2021 he announced he would run for president, but the elections were indefinitely postponed.

No information has been released on his burial, but his adviser Abdullah Othman Abdurrahim told Libyan media that an autopsy had been completed and he could be buried in Bani Walid, south of the capital Tripoli.

Moussa al-Kouni, vice-president of the Presidential Council who represents Libya’s Fezzan region, wrote on X: “No to political assassinations, no to achieving demands by force, and no to violence as a language or a means of expression.”

Rubaya produces around 15% of the world’s coltan, which is processed into tantalum, a heat-resistant metal that is in high demand by makers of mobile phones, computers, aerospace components and gas turbines.

The site, where locals dig manually for a few dollars per day, has been under the control of the AFC/M23 rebel group since 2024.

The collapse occurred on Wednesday and the precise toll was still unclear as of Friday evening.

“More than 200 people were victims of this landslide, including miners, children and market women. Some people were rescued just in time and have serious injuries,” Muyisa said, adding that about 20 injured people were being treated in health facilities.

“We are in the rainy season. The ground is fragile. It was the ground that gave way while the victims were in the hole.”

An adviser to the governor said the number of confirmed dead was at least 227. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the media.

The United Nations says AFC/M23 has plundered Rubaya’s riches to help fund its insurgency, backed by the government of neighboring Rwanda, an allegation Kigali denies.

The heavily-armed rebels, whose stated aim is to overthrow the government in Kinshasa and ensure the safety of the Congolese Tutsi minority, captured even more mineral-rich territory in eastern Congo during a lightning advance last year.

Videos filmed by residents of the area showed streaks of light in the sky with the sound of loud explosions, while other images showed flames several metres high and charred cars.

The capital’s Diori Hamani International Airport houses an airforce base and is located about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the presidential palace.

Niger, a country hit regularly by militant attacks, has been led for more than two years by Abdourahamane Tiani, the head of a junta that overthrew the country’s elected civilian president in 2023.

The shooting began shortly after midnight, according to residents of a neighbourhood near the airport.

Six Niger soldiers, 10 suspected militants killed in fighting

Calm returned two hours later, they told AFP.

It was not immediately clear what had caused the gunfire and whether there were any casualties.

The sound of sirens from fire trucks heading towards the airport could also be heard in the early hours of the morning, according to local residents.

An online activist who supports the military rule, Ibrahim Bana, posted a video on Facebook in which he called on people to turn out on the streets of the capital to “defend the country.”

Militant violence

The country’s largest international airport is also the headquarters of a joint force created by Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali to combat militant groups waging deadly violence in the region.

Since taking over the country, Niger’s military leadership has forced out French and US forces who had been helping to combat the militants.

Niger and its neighbours, also led by military juntas, have teamed up to create their own confederation, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), and have announced the creation of a 5,000-strong force for joint military operations.

Nigeria says not ruling out force in Niger ahead of West African summit

According to ACLED, an NGO that tracks conflict casualties globally, militant violence killed nearly 2,000 people in 2025 in Niger.

A huge uranium shipment with an unknown buyer, that left the country’s north in late November, has also been stuck at the airport for weeks.

The collapse occurred in “five abandoned shafts” of the Umm Fakroun mine in South Kordofan state last Friday, the Sudanese Mineral Resources Company (SMRC) said in a statement.

Since conflict erupted between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in April 2023, both sides’ war efforts have been largely funded by Sudan’s gold industry, in addition to foreign backers.

“The shafts had been abandoned and shut down, but some miners snuck in and were working illegally,” the statement said.

The war has devastated Sudan’s already fragile economy and left much of the country out of work, yet SMRC announced a “five-year high” in production of 70 tonnes in 2025.

But officials lament that much of the gold is smuggled across borders including through Chad, South Sudan and Egypt before reaching the United Arab Emirates, the world’s second-largest gold exporter.

Of last year’s 70 tonnes, only “20 tonnes have been exported through official channels”, army-aligned Finance Minister Gibril Ibrahim told AFP this month.

Thousands of African migrants take the route across the Red Sea, mostly from Djibouti to Yemen in search of work as labourers or domestic workers. The accident occurred early Tuesday in Semera in the Afar region, several hundred kilometres west of Djibouti.

“The accident happened when a lorry overturned which had crowded in citizens who were misled by illegal brokers and didn’t understand the travel route’s danger,” regional authorities said in a press release. There were 22 deaths and 65 injuries, according to the statement. A photo published on the Afar authorities’ Facebook page showed an overturned truck, its passenger compartment and rear section destroyed.

Know locally as “bandits”, the gangs invaded Kasuwan Daji village in Kabe district of Niger State and set a market ablaze, before looting shops for food.

“Over 30 victims lost their lives during the attack, some persons were also kidnapped,” during the raid on Saturday, Wasiu Abiodun, Niger police spokesman said.

Several pictures and video footage seen by AFP showed that some of the victims had their hands tied to their backs before they were killed.

Gangs regularly carry out mass kidnappings for ransom and loot villages in the parts of northwest and northcentral Nigeria.

Niger state has been one of the hardest hit in recent months.

In November, armed gangs seized more than 250 students and staff from a Catholic school in the state.

Authorities announced their release in two batches weeks later without saying whether ransom was paid.

The attack took place less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Papiri village where the students and teachers were snatched from their school. The Catholic church in the area put the death toll at more than 40, a much higher toll than that given by police.

“Reports indicate the bandits operated for hours with no security presence,” the Catholic Church in Kontagora said on its Facebook page.

Nigeria’s security system is stretched thin by security challenges in different parts of the country.

Africa’s most populous country faces multiple conflicts — linked to a long-running jihadist insurgency, bandits, farmer-herder violence or southeastern separatists — that kill both Christians and Muslims.

On Christmas Eve, a suspected suicide bomber killed at least five people in an attack on a mosque in northeastern Borno state.

Washington has in recent months criticised the country’s failure to rein in the violence that President Donald Trump insists amounts to “persecution” of Christians — a framing long used by the US religious right.

Despite the Nigerian government and independent analysts rejecting the accusations, the US launched surprise Christmas day airstrikes on militants linked to the Islamic State group.

Abuja said it approved the hits.

President Bola Tinubu in December vowed a national security revamp when he presented the government’s 2026 budget to the national assembly, allocating the biggest chunk of spending to defence, days after he appointed a new defence minister.

The seizure was made on January 2 aboard  MV Aruna Hulya which “originated from Marshall Islands,” Femi Babafemi, spokesman for the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), said in a statement.

Nigeria has long been considered a trafficking and production hub for drugs bound for Europe and other African countries.

The agency said in November that it arrested 20 Filipino sailors caught ferrying at least 20 kilogrammes of cocaine from Brazil to the same port.

Earlier that month, NDLEA said it was working with US and British anti-drug agencies to investigate a cartel behind the importation of 1,000 kilograms of cocaine discovered in a container at a Lagos port.

The east African country is struggling to emerge from decades of conflict and chaos, battling a bloody group insurgency and frequent natural disasters.

Long lines snaked outside seven polling stations that an AFP correspondent in the capital visited early on Thursday, with those waiting impatient and excited to cast their ballots.

“This is a great day,” Guhad Ali, 37, said, proudly showing his ink-stained finger, proof that he had voted.

“I am so proud that I don’t even feel that I’m queuing,” said 29-year-old mother of two Shamso Ahmed, who spent hours waiting to cast a ballot for the first time in her life.

Thursday’s polls will serve as a test of the direct voting system championed by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, amid opposition from the country’s states who say it is a bid to centralise power in Mogadishu.

“This is the future of the Somali people,” he said after voting, urging every citizen to “take the path of democracy”.

The volatile nation has stepped up security ahead of the polls, with more than 10,000 security personnel deployed across the capital.

“This is history today, it is a day the Somali people have gotten a new door opened, so that we call on the more than 500,000 people, who have taken the voting cards to come out and cast their votes,” electoral commission chief Abdikarim Ahmed Hassan said while visiting a polling station in the south of the capital.

Mogadishu police chief Moalim Mahdi told reporters that “we are committed to ensuring the safety and security of the people” and urged “patience for each other as you cast your vote”.

According to the country’s electoral body more than 1,600 candidates will contest 390 local council seats in the southeastern Banadir region that takes in the capital.

Key opposition parties have boycotted the election, accusing the federal government of “unilateral election processes”.

Somalia’s system of direct voting was abolished after Siad Barre took power in 1969. Since the fall of his authoritarian government in 1991, the country’s political system has revolved around a clan-based structure.

Universal suffrage is, however, practised in the breakaway region of Somaliland, which declared independence in 1991 but has never been internationally recognised.

The helicopter crashed near the mountain’s Barafu Camp on Wednesday, Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement.

Mwananchi newspaper and East Africa TV, citing Kilimanjaro region’s head of police, Simon Maigwa, reported that the helicopter was on a medical rescue mission.

Among the dead were a guide, a doctor, the pilot and two foreign tourists, Mwananchi cited Maigwa as saying, without giving the tourists’ nationalities.

Tanzania president sworn in as opposition says hundreds killed in protests

Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest peak, is nearly 6,000 meters (20,000 ft) above sea level.

The crash happened between 4670 and 4700 metres, Mwananchi reported.

Around 50,000 tourists climb Kilimanjaro annually.