‘Outbreaks hard to prevent’:

Mortar explosion kills 2 soldiers:

Two South African soldiers were killed and three injured when a mortar landed in their base in eastern Congo amid increased unrest in the region, the South African armed forces said Thursday.

The South African National Defence Force, which oversees all of the country’s armed forces, said it believed the mortar explosion on Wednesday was a result of “indirect fire” and an investigation was underway to determine who was responsible.

South Africa has sent soldiers to Congo as part of the Southern African Development Community’s mission to fight against armed rebel groups in the east.

South Africa announced this week it would be sending a new contingent of 2,900 soldiers to eastern Congo. It wasn’t immediately clear if those killed and injured were part of that new deployment.

The base that was hit was in the North Kivu province, South African National Defence Force spokesperson Siphiwe Dlamini said. The injured were taken to a hospital in the city of Goma.

Violence in the conflict-hit region has increased in recent weeks, with many blaming attacks on the M23 rebel group that has been fighting Congolese soldiers in the region for years.

The Congo government says M23 is receiving military support from neighboring Rwanda, which Rwanda denies.

But M23 has indicated in recent statements that it is in the midst of a new advance in eastern Congo, leading to fears the group is again targeting Goma, which it once seized 10 years ago.

More than 1 million people have been displaced by the conflict since November, aid groups say. That adds to the 6.9 million who already fled their homes in one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.

On Thursday, the Norwegian Refugee Council said the recent advance of armed groups toward the key town of Sake, near Goma, “poses an imminent threat to the entire aid system” in eastern Congo. (AP)

❑ ❑ ❑

Extreme wind and rain may lead to bigger and worse desert locust outbreaks, with human-caused climate change likely to intensify the weather patterns and cause higher outbreak risks, a new study has found.

The desert locust - a short-horned species found in some dry areas of northern and eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South

Asia - is a migratory insect that travels in swarms of millions over long distances and damages crops, causing famine and food insecurity. A square kilometer swarm comprises 80 million locusts that can in one day consume food crops enough to feed 35,000 people. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization describes it as ”the most destructive

South African troops drive past thousands who are fleeing the ongoing conflict between government forces and M-23 rebels reach the entrance of the Democratic Republic of Congo eastern city of Goma on Feb 7. Two South African soldiers were killed and three injured when a mortar landed in their base in eastern Congo amid increased unrest in the region, the South African armed forces said on Feb 15. (AP) migratory pest in the world.”

The study, published in Science Advances on Wednesday, said these outbreaks will be “increasingly hard to prevent and control” in a warming climate.

Xiaogang He, author of the study and an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore, said more frequent and severe extreme weather events due to climate change could add unpredictability to locust outbreaks.

But he hoped that the study could help countries understand and address “the impacts of climate variability on locust dynamics, particularly in the context of its repercussions on agricultural productivity and food security” and urged better regional and continental cooperation among countries and control organizations to respond quickly and build early warning systems.

To assess the risk of locust outbreaks in Africa and the Middle East and the connection to climate change, scientists analyzed incidents of desert locust outbreaks from 1985 to 2020 using the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Locust Hub data tool. They created and used a data-driven framework to examine the insects’ patterns to find out what may cause outbreaks to happen across long distances.

University of Delaware entomology professor Douglas Tallamy, who wasn’t part of the research, said erratic weather and rainfall trigger spurts in vegetation and therefore fuels enormous population growth in locusts. (AP)