Africa (except North Africa)

YOUNDE, Oct 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) – A military court in Cameroon has freed opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who had been in prison for nine months and facing charges of insurrection.

His release, along with that of dozens of his supporters, comes as President Paul Biya is aiming to strike a more conciliatory tone.

Kamto was detained after organising protests in January against the result of last year’s presidential election.

The president, in power for 37 years, is trying to quell a separatist revolt.

KHARTOUM, Oct 6 (NNN-Xinhua) — Ethiopia rejected presence of another party in the negotiations between Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

The remarks were made by Ethiopia’s Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity Seleshi Bekele at a press conference in the capital Khartoum.

KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) — One afternoon last month, a young woman with a tablet computer sat next to Alphonsine Umurerwa on the living room couch, asking questions, listening carefully.

She learned that the woman’s 23-year-old daughter, Sandrine Umwungeri, had been very sick for about a year, gradually becoming so weak she stopped leaving their tin-roofed home in a hilly section of Rwanda’s capital city. The family thought she had malaria.

Medicines from a local pharmacy didn’t help. In March, she died.

BRAZZAVILLE, Oct 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The Republic of Congo launched a campaign to distribute anti-malaria bed nets to more than 90 percent of the nation’s households.

More than three million insecticide-treated nets will be distributed over the five-day operation, initiated by Prime Minister Clement Mouamba in the capital Brazzaville.

The cost of the operation, put at 12 million euros ($13.39 million), is being met by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

CAPE TOWN, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday expressed his "deep regret" at the recent spate of xenophobic violence in the country.

"We have expressed our deep regret at the attacks directed at foreign nationals and our condemnation of all forms of intolerance and acts of violence," Ramaphosa told a press conference after meeting with visiting Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in its administrative capital Pretoria.

OUAGADOUGOU, Oct 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The security forces in Burkina Faso say 17 people have been killed in three separate attacks in the north of the country.

Nine people died when dozens of gunmen riding motorcycles attacked Komsilga village, staying there for several hours, the
Burkina Faso Information Agency reported

Seven were killed in Deneon village, and a soldier died elsewhere. All the attacks took place on Saturday.

The soldier was killed in an attack targeting patrol troops in Deou village of Soum province.

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian activist and former presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore pleaded not guilty at a court in Abuja on Monday to charges of treason, money laundering and harassing the president.

State Security Service agents arrested Sowore in early August after he called for a revolution after a February election which he said was not credible. He ran for president in that election, in which former military ruler President Muhammadu Buhari secured a second term in office.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Separate attacks hit a U.S. military base in the Somali town of Baledogle and an Italian military convoy in the Somali capital on Monday, a Reuters witness and a security source said.

A Reuters journalist saw a seriously damaged armored vehicle bearing a small Italian flag sticker in the capital of Mogadishu. It was unclear if there were any casualties.

Italy’s defense ministry said in a statement that an Italian military convoy had been hit by an explosion. No injuries had been reported so far, the defense ministry said.

KADUNA, Nigeria (Reuters) - When Jibril had tried to escape as a boy from an institution in Nigeria that called itself a place of Islamic teachings, he said he was hung up by his arms until bones in his shoulders broke.

Another teenager, one of about 400 men and boys freed in Thursday’s police raid, said boys were often kept in chains and those caught stealing food were whipped until they bled.

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - A Canadian man has died in a paragliding accident in Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, a popular tourist hotspot in East Africa, a Tanzania National Parks (TANAPA) official said on Sunday.

He fell to his death after his parachute failed to open, Paschal Shelutete, senior assistant conservation commissioner at the state-run TANAPA told Reuters.

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