Ousted President Keita dies

Wounded in bomb blast

SOMALI - Somalia’s government spokesperson was wounded on Sunday in an explosion at a road junction set off by a suicide bomber in the capital Mogadishu, police and the national news agency said. A Reuters photographer at the scene of the blast reported seeing body parts lying on the ground outside the house of Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimuu, who was rushed to hospital. “A suicide bomber targeted the government spokesperson, who is now being treated in hospital for his injuries from the blast,” police Spokesman Abdifatah Aden told Reuters.

Self-isolation is cut

LONDON - Boris Johnson’s government’s long-outdated coronavirus isolation rules have finally been lifted today - weeks after staff shortages brought on by them hit the economy and essential services. From this morning people in England can end their quarantine after five full days in a move hailed as restoring ‘extra freedoms’. It comes as a Cabinet minister struck an optimistic note by saying the signs for lifting restrictions later this month are ‘encouraging’. And it coincides with the Prime Minister trying to restore his popularity after a series of lockdown scandals that have led to wide calls for his resignation.

Gunmen kill 50

NIGERIA - Gangs have been terrorising areas of the northwest in recent years, forcing thousands to flee and gaining global notoriety through mass kidnappings at schools for ransom. Local elder Abdullahi Karman Unashi told Reuters that the men entered Dankade village in Kebbi state on Friday night and exchanged gunfire with soldiers and policemen. Security forces were forced to retreat, leaving the attackers to burn shops and grain silos and take cattle into the early hours of Saturday, he said. MALI - Ousted Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has died, his former justice minister and an ex-advisor told Reuters on Sunday. He was 76. The cause of death was not yet clear. Keita, known as IBK, ran the west African country from September 2013 to August 2020, a turbulent period that saw a violent militant insurgency take over large areas of the centre and north, helping drain his popularity.

Coup

He was forced out by a military coup after months of anti-government protests. A former advisor said he died at home in the capital Bamako.

Disputed legislative elections, rumours of corruption, and a sputtering economy also fuelled public anger and drew tens of thousands of people onto the streets of the capital Bamako demanding his resignation in 2020.

He was eventually forced out by a military coup, the leaders of which still rule Mali despite strong international objections.