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AFRICA UPDATE
June 13, 2008
ATTACK ON CAMEROON BORDER REGION
The remote Bakassi peninsula has been
the subject of a lengthy international
dispute
ACameroonian government official
has been abducted and
several policemen killed in an
attack on a village in the border region
of Bakassi.
Unidentified gunmen killed at least
three police officials in the attack, security
sources told the BBC.
The attack happened in the northern
part of the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula,
which Nigeria handed over to
Cameroon in 2006. The rest of the area
is due to be handed over in August.
Meanwhile, a challenge to the ICJ
decision brought in the Nigerian courts
by Bakassi residents who wanted to remain
in Nigeria was turned down.
The Cameroonian deputy-governor
of the region, Felix Morfan, was reportedly
abducted by a group of armed
men on Monday night.
The police had earlier arrested a
number of people accused of being
arms dealers, Cameroonian security
sources told the BBC.
Local journalists said the bodies of
three policemen had been recovered.
The BBC’s Randy Jo Sa’ah in the
Cameroonian capital, Yaounde, says
the attack has caught people by surprise.
It comes at a time when the government
has been vocal about peace in
the region and development projects
that have been supported by the European
Union, he says.
ANigerian former local government
chairman from Bakassi, Emmanuel
Etene, told the BBC that women and
children were fleeing the area because
they feared reprisal attacks.
The northern part of the Bakassi
peninsula was handed over to
Cameroon following a ruling by the International
Court of Justice in the
Hague in 2006. But some residents
have said they do not want to give up
being Nigerian.
PROBE INTO SUDAN’S PLANE INFERNO
Plane on fire at Khartoum airport
The authorities in Sudan have
begun an investigation into the
cause of a fire on an Airbus
A310 airliner that killed at least 29
people on Tuesday night. Most of the
214 on board escaped when the Sudan
Airways plane burst into flames after
landing in bad weather at Khartoum
airport, officials say. Fourteen passengers
are still missing - officials say
they may have left the scene immediately
after the crash. Witnesses say
more bodies were removed from the
charred plane on Wednesday.
The plane landed in bad weather
and witnesses say an engine then exploded.
The fire quickly spread to the
cockpit and forward fuselage as the
passengers and crew made desperate
efforts to escape down emergency
slides.
TV footage showed the wreckage at
Khartoum airport consumed by flames
as emergency crews tried to fight the
fire in the darkness.
The Sudan Airways flight had
flown from Jordan’s capital, Amman,
via Damascus and most of the passengers
were Sudanese. One of the survivors,
Hassan Jakuma, said his experience
had strengthened his Muslim
faith. “I went [to Amman] for medical
treatment, and then this accident happened.
What does that tell you” he
asked. “It tells you that nothing can
kill you, not illness, not an accident,
not a burning plane, nothing can kill
you until it is your time to go.
Sudanese officials say the plane
had tried to land at Khartoum earlier
on Tuesday, but was unable to do so
because of a sandstorm and heavy rain,
the BBC’s Amber Henshaw in Khartoum
reports. The plane was diverted
to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan. It
later returned to Khartoum, landing at
approximately 2000 (1700 GMT), the
BBC correspondent says.
There are then conflicting reports
about what exactly happened.
A spokesman for Sudan Airways
said poor weather had led to the accident.
“We put the cause of the crash
down to the bad weather conditions,
and the plane sliding off the runway,”
Jamal Osman said. “Thankfully, there
was a fast response to the accident and
to removing as many passengers as
possible.”
The Civil Aviation Authority says
the plane was taxi-ing to its parking
bay when a fire started in one of the engines.
Some eyewitnesses say they
had a bad landing and that the pilots
had to brake hard. Experts believe this
could have caused the cylinders to
blow, sparking an explosion.
The director of Khartoum’s airport,
Yusuf Ibrahim, told Sudanese national
television that the plane had landed
“safely” and the pilots were in contact
with the control tower about which
gate to dock at when the fire occurred.
“There was an explosion in one of
the engines and the plane caught fire,”
Mr Ibrahim said.
Abbas al-Fadini, a member of
Sudan’s parliament who was on the
plane, told al-Jazeera television that
the fire started in the right engine before
spreading throughout the plane.
He said crew members had guided
people towards the plane’s exits.
Witnesses said they had seen some
passengers escaping via emergency
chutes after they deployed. “There
was this huge explosion,” one eye-witness
told the BBC. “More than half the
plane was engulfed in a ghastly fire. It
was a horrendous sight.” “I saw a big
fireball and then fast flames,” said another.
Sudan Airways operates a fleet of
Airbus A300 and A310 jets.
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Kipkalya Kones, 56, was planning to
campaign in by-elections
DEATHS OVERSHADOW
KENYA ELECTIONS
Kenya is holding by-elections
in five constituencies, less
than six months after the
country was gripped by violence following
disputed polls.
Two of the seats in question were
held by MPs killed after December’s
polls. But the voting will be overshadowed
by the deaths of two government
ministers in a plane crash on Tuesday.
Roads Minister Kipkalya Kones
and Assistant Home Affairs Minister
Lorna Laboso were on their way to assist
with the by-elections.
A pilot and a security guard were
also killed when the Cessna plane the
ministers were flying in crashed near
the western town of Narok, Kenyan
police told the BBC.
The BBC’s Kevin Mwachiro in Embakasi
says there was a low turn-out in
the morning, although by-elections typically
do not attract high numbers of
voters. He says Electoral Commission
of Kenya officials were hopeful that
turn-out would improve later.
There are fears that the underlying
tensions that sparked clashes after the
polls have still not been resolved and
Opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai says Zimbabwe “is
effectively being run by a military
junta”. He said 66 opposition
supporters had been killed in political
violence since March’s disputed presidential
elections and 200 more were
unaccounted for.
Mr. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic
Change says he beat President
Robert Mugabe outright. Officials
say there must be a run-off on 27 June.
Mr. Tsvangirai said he would not
The president of Uganda says he
is “very happy” about the food
crisis. “Why Because we produce
a lot of food . . . We are stuck with
food,” President Yoweri Museveni told
Commonwealth heads of government.
The president hopes the food crisis
will prompt the removal of trade barriers,
allowing countries like Uganda to
profit from food surpluses. A BBC correspondent
says most benefits are
going to large, commercial farms,
while poor Ugandans are suffering.
could resurface, the BBC’s Karen
Allen in Nairobi says.
Kenya’s grand coalition government—which
has set up a number of
commissions to investigate the violence—has
been looking decidedly
fragile, the BBC correspondent says.
The results could also upset the delicate
balance of power in parliament.
Should the Orange Democratic Movement
lose its majority in parliament,
party leader Raila Odinga’s position as
prime minister in the coalition government
could be uncertain.
The ODM will hope to retain the
seats of Embakasi in Nairobi, as well
as Ainamoi and Emuhaya in the Rift
Valley, scene of the worst violence earlier
this year. But President Mwai
Kibaki’s Party of National Unity is
putting up a spirited fight.
“The numbers are very tight in terms
of who controls parliament. With the
death of the minister and the assistant
minister now the ODM has 100 MPs
and the PNU coalition has 102 MPs,”
says analyst Kwamchetsi Makokha.
There have also been reports of hate
leaflets being circulated in the Kilgoris
constituency, raising the specter of ethnic
violence, which was blamed for
some of the post-poll violence.
Supporters of President Kibaki and
Mr. Odinga have locked horns over
several key areas, including whether
those held after the elections should be
given amnesty or be subject to the full
force of the law.
More than 1,000 people were killed
and some 300,000 displaced after the
polls.
ZIMBABWE RUN BY MILITARY JUNTA
accept a victory for Mr. Mugabe in the
run-off.
BBC Southern Africa correspondent
Peter Biles says this is not the first
time Mr. Tsvangirai has claimed that
Mr. Mugabe’s security officials are in
charge. Mr. Tsvangirai has alleged that
Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri
is responsible for favoring the ruling
Zanu-PF party in creating a partisan
culture of policing.
Mr. Tsvangirai said the MDC was
sure to win the run-off vote and dispelled
UGANDA “HAPPY” ABOUT FOOD CRISIS
I think out of all these hiccups we may get
a more rationalized interaction . . . by
removing trade barriers, by removing
subsidies—President Museveni
The BBC’s Sarah Grainger in
Uganda says most of the population are
subsistence farmers, who do not export
their crops but are affected by the rising
cost of fuel and other inputs. But overall
food production has risen in recent
years. Uganda’s growth rate is expected
to reach 8.9% later on this year, up from
6.5% last year, partly due to debt relief.
“Our problem has been marketing...
We produce 10 million metric tones of
bananas and 40% of it rots because we
have nowhere to sell it,” President Museveni
told delegates.
President Museveni said milk production
had risen so rapidly, it had
been poured away.
That was until Uganda set up a recent
agreement with an Indian processor
plant: excess milk is now being
shipped to India. And he thinks
Uganda can continue turning the food
crisis to its advantage:
“I think out of all these hiccups we
may get a more rationalized interaction
in terms of the use of our resources,
through trade, by removing trade barriers,
by removing subsidies,” he said.
TOP SOMALI AID
WORKER KILLED
Aprominent Somali aid worker
has been shot dead in the capital,
Mogadishu just days after
a ceasefire agreement was signed. The
head of the local Woman and Child
Care aid agency, Mohamed Mahdi,
was killed by unidentified gunmen.
They opened fire on his car, as he was
traveling through Mogadishu.
In a separate incident, five people
were shot dead when gunmen carried
out a hit-and-run attack on a police station
in the city. On Tuesday, Somali Islamist
leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir
Aweys rejected the UN-brokered,
three-month ceasefire deal signed by
Somalia’s government and an opposition
bloc in neighboring Djibouti. He
promised to continue fighting until all
foreign troops had left the country.
The peace deal was signed by another
top Islamist leader, Sheikh Sharif
Sheikh Ahmed, and Prime Minister Nur
Adde. Aimed at ending years of conflict,
the deal provides for Ethiopian troops to
leave Somalia within 120 days. But the
deal did not include many of the armed
Somali groups fighting the transitional
government and its Ethiopian backers.
Correspondents say they were not
surprised by these latest killings. At
least 28 people died in clashes between
Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian
troops backing the Somali government
over the weekend.
On Saturday, BBC Somali service
reporter Nasteh Dahir was killed by
suspected Islamist militants in the
southern port of Kismayo. Somalia has
experienced almost constant civil conflict
since the collapse of Mohamed
Siad Barre’s regime in January 1991.
Morgan Tsvangirai
rumors of discussions about a possible
unity government with Zanu-PF.
“The MDC is focused on the runoff,
our victory is certain,” the party
leader told a news conference in the
capital Harare. Mugabe will lose. It’s
just a formality to go and campaign,
the people have already decided.”
He added that “the issue of a government
of national unity before the
run-off does not arise”. He was referring
to comments made earlier by the
defeated third presidential candidate,
Simba Makoni, who said supporters of
Mr. Tsvangirai and Mr. Mugabe were
in contact to try to resolve the crisis.
Mr. Tsvangirai said a total of 3,000
MDC supporters had required hospital
treatment through state-sponsored violence,
with 25,000 displaced.
The New York-based Human
Rights Watch organization said on
Monday that free elections were not
possible because of the Zanu-PF-organized
violence.
Mr. Mugabe blames his rivals for
the bloodshed. The government has
said those suspected of violence will
now be refused bail.
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