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CONAKRY, Guinea (AFP) — Guinea has recorded the first known case of Marburg virus, a lethal cousin to Ebola, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) says. Here is a factfile on the disease (source: WHO, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). – What is Marburg? – Marburg virus is a highly dangerous pathogen that causes haemorrhagic fever. According to past outbreaks, the average fatality rate is 50 percent, in a range of 24-88 […]
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AFP) — The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan has arrived in Sudan for a week of talks including on outstanding arrest warrants for genocide in Darfur, state media reported Tuesday. Khan will hold talks on “ways to boost cooperation” on investigations into the crimes committed during the devastating civil war in Darfur, the official SUNA news agency said. The United Nations says 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced in […]
by Hamza Mekouar FARWA, Libya (AFP) — Once famed for its exceptional wildlife, Libya’s Farwa island risks becoming just another victim of lawlessness in the war-ravaged North African nation, activists struggling to save it warn. An uninhabited 13-kilometer-long (eight mile) sandbar cut off at high tide in far western Libya, Farwa appears picture-postcard idyllic, with scattered date palms on white sandy beaches and ringed by the sparkling Mediterranean Sea. The International Union for Conservation of […]
ALGIERS, Algeria (AFP) — At least five people have died in raging wildfires in Algeria as firefighters battle more than 31 blazes amid blistering temperatures and tinder-dry conditions, officials said Tuesday. Photographs posted on social media show huge walls of flame and billowing clouds of smoke towering over villages in the forested hills of the Kabylie region, east of the capital Algiers. Algeria is the latest Mediterranean country to be hit by wildfires, after blazes […]
GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — Guinea confirmed a case of Marburg disease, the World Health Organization said on Monday, the first recorded in West Africa of the lethal virus that’s related to Ebola and, like Covid-19, passed from animal hosts to humans. The virus, which is carried by bats and has a fatality rate of up to 88 percent, was found in samples taken from a patient who died on August 2 in southern Gueckedou prefecture, […]
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AFP) — Thousands of homes have been damaged in Sudan after torrential rains caused heavy flooding, with many streets in the capital Khartoum deep in water, AFP correspondents said Sunday. Heavy rains usually fall in Sudan from June to October, and the country faces severe flooding every year, wrecking properties, infrastructure, and crops. In Atbara, a city in Sudan’s north-east, the official news agency SUNA reported that a number of houses had “collapsed” […]
TUNIS, Tunisia (AFP) — Tunisia on Sunday launched a Covid-19 vaccination drive for the over-40s, after receiving more than six million doses from abroad to combat surging infections. The health ministry said 551,008 people had been given jabs in more than 300 centres across the country, in what was billed as an “open day” for vaccinations. Tunisia, in the thick of political and economic crises, has received more than six million doses from Western and […]
ABUJA, Nigeria (AFP) — Nigerian forces have killed 78 gunmen, known locally as bandits, during military operations including air strikes in northwestern Zamfara state, the air force said. Heavily-armed bandits have wracked northwest and central Nigeria for years, but the groups have recently stepped up attacks on schools, kidnapping hundreds of students for ransom and prompting a military response. “On 2 August 2021, Nigerian Air Force… locked on armed bandits on bikes moving into Kwiambana […]
TRIPOLI, Libya (AFP) — Libya called Monday on people to come forward to be vaccinated after it received two million doses of the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm, with more on the way. “We call on all our fellow citizens to be vaccinated,” Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah told reporters at Mitiga airport near Tripoli after the shipment arrived. Adding to its security and political problems, the North African country of around seven million people has been hard […]
KIKWIT, DR Congo (AFP) — Thirty-three people died in a horrific collision between a fuel truck and a crowded bus in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the weekend, police said Monday. The victims were engulfed by a “huge fire sparked by the collision” overnight Saturday in the west of the country, local police captain Antoine Pululu told AFP. Another police source said the bodies were destroyed by the flames, adding that the remains that […]
Tunisian President Kais Saied sacked the defence minister Monday, a day after ousting the prime minister and suspending parliament, plunging the young democracy into constitutional crisis in the midst of a pandemic. Street clashes erupted Monday outside the army-barricaded parliament, after Saied dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and ordered parliament closed for 30 days, a move the biggest political party Ennahdha decried as a “coup”. Saied declared on Sunday that he had “taken the necessary […]
KAMPALA, Uganda (AFP) — At least 800 people in Uganda were given fake coronavirus vaccines — some injected with water — in a scam that involved “unscrupulous” doctors and health workers, government officials said Wednesday. The counterfeit jabs were administered over May and June during a deadly surge of the coronavirus in the East African nation, when new infections soared to record highs of about 1,700 cases per day. The fraudsters targeted people looking to […]
