Kenya

NAIROBI, Mar 20 (NNN-KBC) – African ministers of environment, urged countries in the continent, to prepare for increased cases of medical waste dumping, on the shores off their countries, as a result of the generation of plastics and medical waste from the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ministers called upon African countries, to increase vigilance to protect the continent from illegal dumping of medical and hazardous waste, especially during the ongoing health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Soldiers from Eritrea systematically killed “many hundreds” of people, the large majority men, in a massacre in late November in the Ethiopian city of Axum, Amnesty International says in a new report, echoing the findings of an Associated Press story last week and citing more than 40 witnesses.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Lawyers representing jailed Ethiopian opposition politicians say they are concerned for the lives of their clients, whose hunger strike has gone on for nearly a month and drawn international attention as they protest their treatment by the government.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Tanzania’s president is finally acknowledging that his country has a coronavirus problem after claiming for months that the disease had been defeated by prayer.

Populist President John Magufuli on Sunday urged citizens of the East African country to take precautions and even wear face masks — but only locally made ones. Over the course of the pandemic he has expressed wariness about foreign-made goods, including COVID-19 vaccines.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The head of the World Health Organization urged Tanzania on Sunday to share information on its measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic, saying the authorities there had repeatedly ignored his requests.

President John Magufuli’s sceptical approach towards COVID-19 has caused alarm among WHO officials. A government spokesman told Reuters on Feb.12 that Tanzania had “controlled” the outbreak, but it stopped reporting new coronavirus infections and deaths in May last year. At the time it had registered 509 cases and 21 deaths.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United Nations says Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region faces a “very critical malnutrition situation” as vast rural areas where many people fled during three months of fighting remain out of reach of aid.

The U.N. humanitarian agency also said in a new report that Ethiopian defense forces continue to occupy a hospital in the town of Abi Adi, “preventing up to 500,000 people from accessing health services” in a region where the health system has largely collapsed under looting and artillery fire.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — More than 350 former Peace Corps volunteers and a trio of former U.S. ambassadors have written to U.S. congressmen urging them to condemn the violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, warning that “as the fighting ostensibly winds down, we are quite sure that the war will continue on a much more pernicious level.”

The letter seen by The Associated Press also asks lawmakers to press for humanitarian aid to all parts of Tigray, urge the United Nations to investigate and advocate for media access to the region “to document human rights abuses.”

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Ethiopia’s government has privately told Biden administration staffers its embattled Tigray region has “returned to normalcy,” but new witness accounts describe terrified Tigray residents hiding in bullet-marked homes and a vast rural area where effects of the fighting and food shortages are yet unknown.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United States said all soldiers from Eritrea should leave Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region “immediately.”

A State Department spokesperson in an email to The Associated Press cited “credible reports of looting, sexual violence, assaults in refugee camps and other human rights abuses.”

“There is also evidence of Eritrean soldiers forcibly returning Eritrean refugees from Tigray to Eritrea,” the spokesperson said.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The Eritrean soldiers’ pockets clinked with stolen jewelry. Warily, Zenebu watched them try on dresses and other clothing looted from homes in a town in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region.

“They were focused on trying to take everything of value,” even diapers, said Zenebu, who arrived home in Colorado this month after weeks trapped in Tigray, where she had gone to visit her mother. On the road, she said, trucks were full of boxes addressed to places in Eritrea for the looted goods to be delivered.