Day: July 18, 2022

Somali authorities say an aircraft carrying 36 passengers and crew crashed at Mogadishu airport Monday but all on board survived.

The Jubba Airways plane was carrying civilian passengers from the southwestern city of Baidoa when it crashed-landed at Mogadishu’s Adan Adde International Airport on Monday.

Ahmed Moalim, Somalia’s civil aviation director, who spoke to VOA by phone, said the plane crashed around 11:00 a.m. local time while landing at the airport.

According to eyewitnesses, the plane touched down before reaching the runway, and flipped over, coming to a halt in an upside down position.

Witnesses told VOA that the plane caught fire, with firefighters rushing to put out the flames.

Despite the crash and the fire, Moalim said that of the 36 people on board only three sustained minor injuries.

Source: Voice of America

Aid group Refugees International has expressed concern about the reported relocation of more than 100 Eritrean refugees from areas near Addis Ababa to camps on the unstable border between Ethiopia’s Amhara and Tigray regions.

Ethiopian authorities are accused of targeting Eritrean refugees by arresting them in the capital and sending them back to the country’s restive north.

Abdullahi Halakhe is the Refugees International senior advocate for East and Southern Africa.

“For the last few days, Eritrean refugees who have been living in Ethiopia for some time now and so the government rounded up these refugees who are in Addis Ababa and (put them) in several buses and took them back to Amhara region. The Amhara region and the Tigray region border each other and there is tension,” said Halakhe.

Amhara and Tigrayan forces have been fighting over land and other long-standing disputes.

About 20,000 Eritrean refugees lived in two refugee camps in the Tigray region before the war between Ethiopia’s government and Tigrayan rebels broke out in November 2020.

After Eritrean and Tigrayan forces allegedly attacked the camps, many of the refugees fled to the Amhara and Afar regions, with others moving to the capital Addis Ababa.

In late 2020, Ethiopian authorities carried out a similar operation targeting Eritrean refugees in the capital, sending them to Adi Harush and Mai Ani in the Tigray region at the height of the war.

Halakhe said in many ways, Eritrean refugees are the most vulnerable group in Ethiopia.

“They are caught between the Eritrean government tracking them because it paints a bad image about their country and the warring parties inside Ethiopia also targeting them, as such they are probably most difficult position, so death, sexual violence, and so many other egregious human rights and humanitarian violations have been visited upon them,” said Halakhe.

Last year Human Rights Watch said Eritrean forces and Tigray militias committed killings, rape and other abuses against Eritrean refugees.

Ethiopia hosts at least 140,000 Eritreans who fled hardship and persecution in their home country.

Refugees International, an organization which promotes human rights and the protection of refugees, is calling on Ethiopian authorities to respect its laws and protect Eritrean refugees from those who wish to harm them.

Source: Voice of America

Cameroonian authorities have been displaying the corpse of a separatist leader in towns and villages to deter the rebels and warn youth against joining their cause. Cameroon’s military says last week it killed Lekeaka Oliver, who was wanted for working with rebel groups in neighboring Nigeria to kill civilians, commit beheadings, and burn hundreds of public buildings.

Cameroon’s military says hundreds of people have watched the past few days as they paraded the corpse of separatist leader Lekeaka Oliver.

The military says its troops last week killed Oliver, a self-proclaimed field marshal who led the Red Dragon rebel group, in Menji, a town near the border with Nigeria, along with his bodyguard.

It accused Oliver of beheading at least 10 people, including three traditional rulers, and attacking scores of schools since 2017.

Chamberlin Ntouou Ndong is the highest-ranking government official in Meme, an administrative unit in Kumba, a town also along the border, where he spoke Sunday to a crowd.

Ndong said Cameroon’s government asked the military to display the corpse as a gruesome warning to Anglophone separatists fighting to carve out an independent state from Cameroon and its French-speaking majority.

“It is a testimony that all those who are not willing to surrender are going to face our forces of law and order. The head of state gave a word out to all who remain in the bushes to lay down their arms and join the remaining population in the development of this country,” he said.

Ndong says the display aims deter Cameroonian youth from joining rebel groups.

Capo Daniel is leader of the Ambazonia Defense Forces, a separatist group that fights alongside the Red Dragons.

Daniel says the parading of their leader’s corpse will not stop the rebels from fighting.

“Field marshal has been replaced by a younger and more vibrant leader,” he said. “Our armed resistance against Cameroon rule will only intensify. Our forces have received instructions to carry out reprisal actions in response to the killing of [the] field marshal. Such display of dead body by the Cameroon government only adds to its list of terror tactics being used to subjugate our people. Our fight of self-determination will only intensify.”

Ephraim Foreke is a teacher at a government school in Fontem in the Lebialem administrative unit where many of Oliver’s rebel camps were located.

Foreke says Oliver’s death is a relief for civilians who lived in fear of the Red Dragons.

Speaking to VOA Monday, Foreke said locals have started cleaning schools with the hope that children and teachers who fled the attacks will return.

“We are in front of the administrative block. There are some people below who are clearing down to the Francophone section. All the doors were destroyed. Chairs that were there were all eaten by rats. Every place is like a graveyard. They ransacked the whole place,” he said.

Cameroon’s government vowed the military will protect civilians and their property.

The U.N. says Cameroon’s five-year separatist conflict has killed more than 3,300 people and displaced at least 750,000 internally and to neighboring Nigeria.

Source: Voice of America