NEWS OF THE DAY
_1 Mortar attack: The United Nations mission in Somalia said several people were wounded when mortar rounds landed inside the U.N. and African Union compounds in Mogadishu. Mortar rounds landed early afternoon Sunday, the mission said. The al Qaedalinked alShabab extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack in Somalia’s capital. The heavily fortified U.N. compound has been hit by mortars in the past.The African Union has a multinational force that is preparing to hand over responsibility for the country’s security to Somali forces over the coming months.
_2 Mosque stormed: Armed men stormed the grand mosque in Burkina Faso’s northern village of Salmossi, killing at least 16 people and wounding two others, a local official said Sunday. The armed men entered during evening prayers on Friday, according to Ernest Bouma Nebie, a regional official in Oudalan province near the border with Mali. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but extremist groups with links to al Qaeda and the Islamic State group are active in the region. Increased attacks along the border in the past few months have forced more than a quartermillion people to flee, the U.N. refugee agency says. On Saturday about 1,000 people gathered in the capital, Ouagadougou, at the invitation of a dozen civil society organizations to denounce terrorism and the presence of foreign military bases in Africa. Extremists from neighboring Mali and Niger have recruited youth frustrated by poverty and perceived state insecurity, while local extremist groups have grown.
_3 March planned: Ukraine’s president is urging participants in a nationalist march Monday to avoid violence, amid growing anger at his peace plan for the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv is deploying thousands of police to watch over the march, expected to include nationalist and farright groups protesting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s policies. Monday’s march comes on a Ukrainian holiday when nationalist groups traditionally gather. The protesters reject a tentative agreement for local elections in eastern Ukraine, fearing that it cedes too much to Russia. The fiveyear conflict with Moscowbacked separatists has killed 13,000 people.
_4 Hungary elections: Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s dominant rightwing Fidesz party suffered large losses in Sunday’s local elections in Hungary. Opposition candidates won the mayoral race in Budapest, the capital, and were also projected to win in 10 of the country’s 23 largest cities. In 2014, the opposition won just three of those races. Fidesz, which had won every major election since 2010, kept up its dominance in smaller cities and towns and, especially, in rural areas.
_5 Migrant caravan: Hundreds of migrants from Africa, the Caribbean and Central America found themselves corralled in a migrant detention facility in southern Mexico on Sunday after a futile attempt to head north as part of a caravan aiming to reach the United States. The group set out before sunrise Saturday from the town of Tapachula, where many had been marooned for months unsuccessfully trying to get transit visas. They carried heavy backpacks, babies and parcels on their heads. Just before dusk, after having trudged more than 20 miles north, they were surrounded by hundreds of National Guard agents and police who persuaded the exhausted migrants to board vans back to Tapachula. It was unclear if any would be deported. The crackdown underlined the reversal in Mexican immigration policy under pressure from Washington.