US Navy seizes Iranian weapons bound for Yemen rebels

Washington (AFP) – US naval forces in the Arabian Sea seized a shipment of weapons that the United States believes was sent from Iran and was bound for Huthi rebels in Yemen, the Navy said.

The patrol ship USS Sirocco intercepted and seized the shipment hidden aboard a small dhow on March 28.

The illicit cargo included 1,500 AK-47s, 200 RPG launchers and 21 .50 caliber machine guns, the Navy said in a statement.

The dhow and its crew were allowed to sail on after the weapons were seized.

The Navy said it was the latest in a series of illicit weapons shipments which the United States believes originated in Iran.

Pro-government Yemeni forces, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, have been battling the Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels for more than a year.

The warring parties are preparing for a UN-brokered ceasefire due to take effect on April 10 and intended to pave the way for peace talks in Kuwait a week later.

Air France attendants are refusing to wear headscarves on flights to Iran

As Air France resumes flights to Iran after an 8-year hiatus, the airline is telling female crew members to wear pants instead of dresses on the plane, and don jackets and headscarves before stepping off.

Many union-represented flight attendants are not thrilled with this requirement, The Guardian reports, arguing the attire should be optional.

“They are forcing us to wear an ostentatious religious symbol. We have to let the girls choose what they want to wear,” one union leader said. “Those that don’t want to must be able to say they don’t want to work on those flights.”

Air France will run three flights daily to Tehran starting April 17, now that economic sanctions against the government were lifted in accordance with the international nuclear deal.

Cameroon: Joint forces arrest 300 Boko Haram fighters

Cameroonian soldiers stand guard at a lookout post on Feb. 25 as they take part in operations against the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram in northern Cameroon, near the border with Nigeria.

AP – YAOUNDE, Cameroon — Cameroon says multinational forces fighting Boko Haram have arrested over 300 Islamic extremists and freed at least 2,000 people from their strongholds along Cameroon, Nigeria and Chad borders.

Cameroon’s commander of the joint forces, Bouba Dobekreo, said Tuesday that during the three-day operation, forces also destroyed a Boko Haram training and logistic base about 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of the Nigerian town of Kumshe.

The governor of Cameroon’s Far North province, Midjiyawa Bakari, has asked that all displaced people be directed by the military to the Minawao refugee camp in northern Cameroon to be better tracked.Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Benin have contributed about 9,000 troops to fight the six-year insurgency launched by the Nigeria-based militants. More than 1,000 humanitarian workers have also been deployed.

Panama Papers: Who’s Implicated from Africa?

By Conor Gaffey | Newsweek

Rawal, the Deputy Chief Justice and Deputy President of Kenya’s Supreme Court, has been linked to as many as 11 offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands by the leak.

The massive leak of confidential documents described as the Panama Papers has got a lot of politicians and world leaders hot under the collar.

The leak of more than 11.5 million documents from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca—obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with more than 100 other news organizations—is the biggest data leak in history. The documents show how 143 politicians, including 12 national leaders, have used offshore tax havens and other means to avoid tax and sanctions. While the use of offshore facilities is not in itself a crime, the leak could have devastating consequences for many—the Australian Tax Office is investigating more than 800 people for possible tax evasion, while world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson may also have questions to answer.

Here, Newsweek considers five of the African personalities who have been caught up in the scandal.

1. South Africa: President Jacob Zuma’s nephew

The papers name the nephew of embattled South African President Jacob Zuma, Khulubuse Zuma, as a representative of Caprikat Limited—one of two offshore companies that acquired oilfields in Democratic Republic of Congo in a 100 million rand ($6.8 million) deal in 2010. Caprikat is registered in the British Virgin Islands, the main offshore tax haven involved in the Panama Papers.

Khulubuse’s spokesperson Vuyo Mkhize said on Monday that “Khulubuse does not, and has never held any offshore bank account” and that the Panama Papers simply suggested he was associated with Caprikat, which was a matter of public record.

2. Kenya: Kalpana Rawal, the country’s second-highest judge

Rawal, the Deputy Chief Justice and Deputy President of Kenya’s Supreme Court, has been linked to as many as 11 offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands by the leak. The judge was a director or shareholder of four companies while her husband, Hasmukhrai, held the same position in seven other companies, Kenya’s Daily Nation reported. Three of the companies were used to buy and sell property in the U.K.

The judge has denied any wrongdoing and stated that the practice of registering and running businesses in tax havens is a “perfectly legal and legitimate corporate practice in the U.K.,” where her family are involved in the real estate business.

3. Nigeria: James Ibori, the jailed ex-governor of Nigeria’s oil hub

Ibori served as the governor of Nigeria’s Delta state—a center of the West African country’s vital oil and gas industry —between 1999 and 2007. He was convicted in 2012 for fraud, totaling nearly £50 million ($77 million at the time) by a London court following a complicated extradition procedure after he evaded arrest by Nigerian authorities and fled to Dubai. Ibori is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence in the U.K.

Ibori was linked to four offshore companies by the Panama Papers link, one of which—named Stanhope Investments—was used to open a Swiss bank account, into which funds were channeled for the purchase of a $20 million private jet.

4. Democratic Republic of Congo: The president’s twin sister

The twin sibling of Congolese President Joseph Kabila, Jaynet Désirée Kabila Kyungu, has been a member of parliament in the vast Central African country since 2012. Kyungu, who is also the daughter of assassinated ex-Congolese president Laurent Kabila, also runs a media company called Digital Congo, which has TV, radio and internet wings.

She is linked to Keratsu Holding Limited, a company incorporated in the Pacific island of Niue in June 2001, months before her brother was elected as the president of Democratic Republic of Congo. Kyungu has yet to comment on the allegations.

5. Angola: The oil-rich country’s petroleum minister

José Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos has twice served as Angola’s petroleum minister, between 1999 and 2002 and again from 2008 until present. He also served as president of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 2009. Angola is Africa’s second-biggest oil producer behind Nigeria, churning out 1.8 million barrels per day according to 2014 data from the U.S. Department of Energy.

According to the Panama Papers, Botelho de Vasconcelos was listed as one of two individuals with power of attorney for Medea Investments Limited, which was founded in 2001 in Niue. Botelho de Vasconcelos is yet to respond to the leak.

Destruction, razed monastery left behind by IS in Syria town

QARYATAIN, Syria (AP) — Syrian troops fired their guns in celebration amid smoldering buildings inside the town of Qaryatain on Monday, hours after recapturing it from retreating Islamic State militants who had abducted and terrorized dozens of its Christian residents.

An Associated Press crew was among the first journalists to enter the town and witnessed the destruction wrought on the once-thriving Christian community and its fifth-century monastery, which was bulldozed by the extremist group last summer.

Once a cherished pilgrimage site, much of the St. Elian monastery had been reduced to a pile of stones.

Escorted by the Syrian government, the AP crew was allowed to venture only about three kilometers (1½ miles) inside Qaryatain, located 125 kilometers (75 miles) northeast of Damascus, because army experts were still clearing explosives and mines left by the group.

Black smoke billowed from the western side of town where skirmishes continued. Near the central square, some residential and government buildings were completely destroyed, their top floors flattened. Others had gaping holes where they had taken direct artillery hits or were pock-marked by gunfire. Electricity poles and cables were broken and shredded; a snapped tree hung to one side.

On Sunday, a week after taking back the historic town of Palmyra from IS, Syrian troops and their allies recaptured Qaryatain. Aided by Russian airstrikes, the advance dealt yet another setback to IS, depriving the extremists of a main base in central Syria that could eventually be used by government forces to launch attacks on IS-held areas near the Iraqi border.

Soldiers were visibly buoyed Monday by their successive battlefield victories.

“We will soon liberate all of Syria from the mercenaries of the Gulf and Erdogan,” said one soldier, referring to Gulf countries and the Turkish leader who have been strong supporters of the rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

Qaryatain lies midway between Palmyra and the capital, Damascus, and was once home to a sizeable Christian population. Before IS took it over last August, it had a mixed population of around 40,000 Sunni Muslims and Christians, as well as thousands of internally displaced people who had fled from the nearby city of Homs.

As it came under militant attack, many of the Christians fled. More than 200 residents, mostly Christians, were abducted by the extremists, including a Syrian priest, the Rev. Jack Murad, who was held by the extremists for three months.

During the eight months that Qaryatain was under IS control, some Christians were released and others were made to sign pledges to pay a tax imposed on non-Muslims. Some have simply vanished.

Days after the militants publicly beheaded an 81-year-old antiquities scholar in nearby Palmyra last August, the militants posted photos on social media that showed them leveling the St. Elian Monastery with bulldozers. They also trashed an ancient church next to the Assyrian Christian monastery, and desecrated a nearby cemetery, breaking the crosses and smashing name plates.

The church’s doors and windows were blown out and its interior appeared to have been used by the militants as a workshop for manufacturing bombs and booby traps, its floor littered with gas canisters, metal kettles, coffee pots and blue pails.

Scrawled in blue paint on the church’s exterior stone wall was a verse from a 19th -century Egyptian poet known as the Poet of Islam: “We faced you in battle like hungry lions who find the flesh of the enemy to be the most delicious.” It was signed: “The Lions of the Caliphate.”

Another wall was sprayed with the words “Lasting and Expanding,” the Islamic State group’s logo. It was dated August 15, 2015.

A Syrian soldier showed journalists an ID apparently left behind by an IS militant from the nearby town of Mheen. It was stamped with the words “al-Dawla al-Islamiya,” or Islamic State.

The officer said the Syrian army would now turn east to capture the next IS-held town of Sukhneh, on the road between Palmyra and Deir el-Zour near the Iraqi border.

Meanwhile, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the U.S. carried out an airstrike late Sunday on a senior al-Qaida “operational meeting” in northwest Syria that resulted in “several enemy killed.” He said the U.S. believes a senior al-Qaida figure, Abu Firas al-Souri, was at the meeting and “we are working to confirm his death.”

The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi websites, said al-Souri died in the U.S. strike, which targeted the headquarters of Jund al-Aqsa, an extremist group that fights alongside al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front. Al-Souri was the former spokesman for the Nusra Front, the group reported on social media Monday.

The strike killed at least 21 militants in Idlib province, a jihadist stronghold in northern Syria, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Military officials said over the weekend that the U.S. killed an Islamic State fighter who was believed to be directly connected to the attack in Iraq that killed Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin about a week ago. Cardin, of Temecula, California, was killed by rocket fire at a base near Makhmour.

Cook said Monday that Jasim Khadijah, a former Iraqi officer and a member of the Islamic State group, “played a role in the rocket attacks” that killed Cardin.

___

Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

The brutal toll of Boko Haram’s attacks on civilians

By Kevin Uhrmacher and Mary Beth Sheridan | WP

a2cbbdbd43c6828511f8b6d7ff47cf9c — ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS SINCE 2011 Circles are sized based on number of fatalitie

As the Islamic State’s attacks in Europe have captured the world’s attention, an ISIS-affiliated group has been waging an even deadlier campaign in Africa.

Hundreds killed when 20 attackers detonated coordinated blasts at police stations around a city. Fifty dead when suicide bombers, including women and children, attacked a market and camps housing people trying to escape the violence. Fifty Christians targeted and killed in a student housing area near a school.

People gather around burnt cars near a Catholic church after a bomb blast in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, on December 25, 2011. (Sunday Aghaeze/Getty Images)

Young girls fleeing Boko Haram walk past livestock burned by the militants on Feb. 6 in Mairi village, near Maiduguri. (AFP/Getty Images)

These are a few of the hundreds of horrors wrought regularly by Boko Haram, an Islamist militant organization based in Nigeria, over the past six years.

[It’s not just the Islamic State. Other terror groups surge in West Africa.]

The group’s rise, some experts say, is attributable to government corruption and economic differences between the Muslim northern areas and more populous and prosperous Christian South.

While military forces have had some success regaining territory in the past year, Boko Haram continues to carry out attacks on civilians.

Last year was the group’s deadliest yet, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which tracks civil unrest and political violence in Africa and Asia.

Researchers recorded more than 6,000 fatalities resulting from Boko Haram attacks aimed at civilians. Because the counts below include only attacks on civilians, and not battles over territory, they underestimate what some say is a total of 15,000 people killed by the group.

Deaths in attacks aimed at civilians, by month

Jan. 2015: A multi-day attack in the town of Baga left about 2,000 dead, some estimates suggest.

Conflict in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, has spilled over into neighboring nations, including Cameroon, which recently launched a campaign to retake territory from the militants. Chad, Benin and Niger have also contributed soldiers to the fight.

How Boko Haram evolved

A government crackdown in 2009 led the group to turn to violence. In 2010, a jailbreak freed more than 700 inmates. Increasingly in the following years, militants carried out hundreds of attacks, many that killed more than 10, and some that claimed hundreds.

2011

114 dead in 32 attacks

Boko Haram was established in 2002 in Maiduguri, but it was years before it spawned an insurgency. By 2011, its fighters were attacking government officials, police and religious figures. That December, it launched a

suicide attack on a U.N. regional headquarters in Abuja.

2012

910 dead in 148 attacks

The insurgents increased the sophistication of their attacks, with a gunfire-and-bomb assault on government buildings that killed at least 185 people in January in the Northern city of Kano.

2013

1,008 dead in 108 attacks

As Boko Haram’s attacks grew more brutal, President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in three states in the northeast. The U.S. government

designated Boko Haram a terrorist organization.

2014

3,425 dead in 220 attacks

The group gained international attention after its fighters kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls, which prompted the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign. That August, Boko Haram announced it had established a “caliphate” in the expanding territory it controlled.

2015

6,006 dead in 270 attacks

Boko Haram declared its loyalty to the Islamic State. Troops from Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger launched an offensive that eventually recaptured many towns from the militants.

2016

422 dead in 36 attacks

Boko Haram has been forced from much of the territory it controlled, but it continues to carry out suicide

bombings in populated areas in northeastern Nigeria.

An aerial view of the destroyed town of Gwoza, Boko Haram's base in northern Nigeria, recently retaken by the Nigerians, on April 8, 2015. (Jane Hahn for the Washington Post) — An aerial view of the destroyed town of Gwoza, Boko Haram’s base in northern Nigeria, recently retaken by the Nigerians, on April 8, 2015. (Jane Hahn for the Washington Post)

As government forces have reclaimed territory, the group’s scorched-earth tactics have been on display.

“The scene was post-apocalyptic, an entire city destroyed. Almost every building, it seemed, had been ransacked or set on fire,” Washington Post reporter Kevin Sieff wrote last year after touring the group’s former capital city, Gwoza. “Schools were in ruin. Bodies decayed in a pile.”

Millions of Nigerians fleeing violence

A girl does laundry in the Dalori camp for internally displaced persons in Maiduguri, Nigeria, which houses close to 20,000 people. (Jane Hahn for the Washington Post)

Stopping the insurgency is not the only crisis Nigeria faces. More than 2 million Nigerians have been forced to leave their homes to escape the violence. The map below shows the number of internally displaced persons by country, as reported by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center:

Recent estimate from the International Organization for Migration

While it may not draw the attention of the West as frequently as the Islamic State, Boko Haram is one of the most devastating terrorist organizations in the world. Regaining territory from the group will only be the first step in a long process of healing the deep wounds it has inflicted.

New Ebola Death Confirmed In Liberia

A new Ebola case has been confirmed in Liberia, several months after the outbreak of the deadly virus was believed to be contained, Reuters reported. The victim, who died on Thursday, was a woman in her early 30s.

It’s the first confirmed case of the virus in Liberia since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the country Ebola-free in mid-January. The country had been declared free of Ebola twice before, in May and September of 2015, only to have new cases crop up.

News of the latest death comes three days after WHO said the Ebola crisis was no longer a public health emergency of international concern, due to dropping rates of transmission.

Despite the easing of the crisis, clusters of the virus were reported in West Africa as late as mid-March. On March 22, Liberia closed its border with neighbouring Guinea after several Ebola cases were discovered there. Guinea, which was declared free of Ebola in late December before new cases were found, has vaccinated nearly 800 people against the virus over the past week, according to CNN.

More than 11,000 people, mostly from the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, have died in the 2014 Ebola outbreak.

1st passenger flight leaves Brussels since March 22 attacks

BRUSSELS (AP) — A Brussels Airlines plane heading to the Portuguese city of Faro took off from Brussels Airport on Sunday, the first passenger flight to leave the airport since suicide bombings on March 22 ripped through its check-in counters.

Security at the airport was tight with completely new check-in procedures for passengers.

Two other planes were scheduled to leave later Sunday — Brussels Airlines flights to Athens and Turin, Italy. The three flights were a test run for a European aviation hub that used to handle 600 flights a day and plans to slowly climb back to normal capacity.

Arnaud Feist, the CEO of Brussels Airport Co., had said ahead of Sunday’s flights that they were a symbolic “sign of hope” following “the darkest days in the history of aviation in Belgium.”

On Sunday, he thanked employees for their courage, solidarity and the “impressive work carried out in so little time.”

“We are more than an airport … We are a family more bound together than ever,” he said at a ceremony at the airport.

“It will take time to accept what happened and more time to get over the pain,” Feist said as the flight for Faro took off. “But we will never forget.”

Damage to the airport was extensive when double suicide bombs exploded near its crowded check-in counters 12 days ago, killing 16 victims and maiming people from around the world. Another bombing that day on a Brussels subway train killed 16 other people. Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group.

Feist said Belgium’s biggest airport should be back around 20 percent of capacity on Monday and able to process 800 passengers an hour. He said Saturday that he hoped full service at the airport could be restored by the end of June or the beginning of July in time for the summer vacation season.

However, traffic may take time to return to its previous pace. Delta Airlines said on Saturday that it was suspending service between Atlanta and Brussels until March 2017.

New security measures at the airport aimed to minimize the chances of any repeat attacks.

Police on Sunday conducted spot checks of vehicles before they arrived. A large white tent was set up outside the terminal to screen travelers’ IDs, travel documents and bags before they were allowed to enter a specially built area for check-in.

A drop-off parking area outside the terminal was closed down and authorities said there would be no rail or public transport access to the airport for the foreseeable future.

The bombers entered the check-in area with suitcases packed with explosives and nails, and the resulting blasts collapsed the airport’s ceiling and shattered windows.

The attacks have prompted a wider discussion among aviation authorities in many countries over whether to impose routine security checks at the entry to airport terminals

Liberia authorities call for calm after new Ebola case

Monrovia (AFP) – Liberian authorities on Saturday called for calm following the discovery of a fresh case of the deadly Ebola virus, more than two months after the epidemic had been declared over in the country.

The latest victim was a 30-year-old woman who died on Thursday while being transferred to hospital in the capital Monrovia

The country’s health ministry put out a statement urging citizens “not to panic in the wake of the new Ebola case”

There was no news on the origins of the latest case, after Liberia was declared Ebola-free, for a second time, in January.

“We continue to investigate the source of transmission of this newer flare-up,” deputy health minister Tolbert Nyensuah told AFP.

Liberian authorities and their partners, including the World Health Organisation, “are on top of this. We know what to do now, we can contain it, we can control it. No need to panic,” he said.

The new case in Liberia was discovered days after a resurgence of Ebola in neighbouring Guinea which has killed seven people in the last few weeks.

Liberia briefly closed its border with Guinea following the announcement of new cases there, but it has subsequently reopened it, several Guinean sources confirmed to AFP.

Sierra Leone announced beefed up security measures along with screening and surveillance points at all border crossings with Guinea on Thursday.

Liberia was the country worst hit by the outbreak of the disease which has claimed 11,300 lives since December 2013, the vast majority in the three West Africa countries.

The WHO had said on Tuesday that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa no longer constituted an international emergency, voicing confidence that remaining isolated cases in the affected countries can be contained.

But a significant number of deaths are believed to have gone unreported and “flare-ups” relating to the persistence of the virus in survivors’ bodies pose ongoing challenges.

Ebola causes severe fever and muscle pain, weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea. In many cases it shuts down organs and causes unstoppable internal bleeding. Patients often succumb within days.

The virus is spread through close contact with the sweat, vomit, blood or other bodily fluids of an infected person, or the recently deceased.

Some Monrovia residents, showing no signs of panic, told AFP that at first the news of a fresh outbreak of Ebola had seemed like an April Fools’ joke.

“It is worrisome to hear that Ebola is back, but I am confident that it will pass. I am sure that it will never be like the first time,” said saleswoman Agnes Mulbah.

How Boko Haram evolved

Millions of Nigerians fleeing violence

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