Niger forces kill 57

16 dead in S. Sudan’s Wau raid

NIAMEY, April 11, (RTRS): Niger security forces killed 57 members of Islamist militant group Boko Haram who attacked a village in the southeastern Diffa region overnight, the defence ministry said in a statement on Monday.

Fifteen soldiers and two civilians were wounded during the attack by heavily armed men in Gueskerou village, which is around 30 kms (22 miles) northeast of Diffa town, it said.

“Among the enemy there were 57 terrorists killed, a Toyota pick-up recovered along with a 60 mm mortar, two RPG 7s (rocket propelled grenade launchers), five machine guns, 20 AK-47s and a lot of ammunition,” the statement said. The report could not be independently confirmed.

Boko Haram has killed 15,000 people and displaced more than two million during a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic state in Nigeria. A regional force that includes troops from Niger has retaken much of its territory in the last two years.

In recent years its attacks have spilled into neighbouring Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

Meanwhile, Nigeria’s military on Monday released 593 people after clearing them of having ties with the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, a spokesman said.

The military has arrested thousands in its fight against the insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic caliphate in the northeast, now in its eighth year, which has killed over 20,000 people and forced more than two million to flee their homes.

The chief of army staff directed that those arrested be “released unconditionally if found not to have anything to do with insurgency or Boko Haram”, said Brigadier General Abdulraman Kuliya.

He added that the 593 who were freed had been arrested in multiple locations, held for varying lengths of time up to three months and were comprised of elderly people, men, women and children.

At least 16 people were killed in the South Sudanese town of Wau on Monday, said the United Nations, as witnesses said ethnic militiamen went house to house searching for people from other groups.

Streets were deserted as families hid inside, residents told Reuters by

Pena Nieto’s government was not trying hard to catch the former PRI grandee.

The Mexican attorney general’s office said the government would in coming days submit a request for Yarrington’s extradition to Mexico, where he faces up to 20 years in prison, but noted he could also be sent to the United States.

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Yarrington

phone. Some reported seeing killings.

Witnesses said the militia members were aligned with the government in the country’s ethnically charged civil war. They accused army soldiers of blocking the main road to a civilian encampment protected by UN peacekeepers.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said two UN peacekeeping patrols had been sent to the area on Monday and more were expected to patrol on Tuesday. The UN peacekeeping mission is known as UNMISS.

“They saw 16 bodies of civilians in a hospital and at least 10 others were injured,” Dujarric told reporters in New York.

“Eighty-four people have arrived at the UNMISS protection of civilians site in Wau, while at least 3,000 people have reportedly moved to a site run by the Catholic church in town and those are mostly women and children,” he said.

South Sudan’s deputy army spokesperson, Colonel Santo Domic Chol, said fighting had first broken out during a mutiny by soldiers at the town’s prison. He was awaiting more information, he said.

A suicide bomber wearing army uniform killed at least nine soldiers at a camp in Somalia’s capital on Monday, authorities said, and a government official was killed by a bomb planted in his car.

Al-Qaeda-linked insurgent group al Shebab claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing at the military training camp on the outskirts of Mogadishu.

“An armed suicide bomber with an explosive jacket entered the camp and blew up himself after firing at the soldiers,” police officer Nur Hussein said.

A military colonel, asking not to be named, told Reuters: “The suicide bomber blew himself up minutes after the training. At least nine soldiers died and a dozen others were injured.

“Some of the injured ones are in serious condition. It is not easy to prevent a militant in military uniform who wants to kill himself.”

In another part of the city, a car bomb killed a civil servant, said a spokesman for Mogadishu’s mayor, Abdifatah Omar Halane.

On Sunday, an al Shebab car bomb outside a Mogadishu army base killed at least 15 people.

“It’s a decision the Italian authorities will have to evaluate and make,” Alberto Elias Beltran, a senior official at the attorney general’s office, told a news conference.

Yarrington, who has not made any public statement since his arrest in Florence, faces the prospect of two life sentences if convicted in the United States, Elias said.

Yarrington governed Tamaulipas between 1999 and 2005, and is one of several politicians in the PRI facing prosecution for suspected corruption. He was suspended from the PRI in 2012.

The PRI, which has also been dogged by accusations of corruption under Pena Nieto, faces an uphill struggle to retain the presidency in 2018. PRI lawmakers say privately the party needs to go after corrupt officials to boost its credibility. (RTRS)