Leaders launch Sahel force

15 killed in CAR clashes

BAMAKO, July 3, (Agencies): African powers launched a new multinational military force to tackle Islamist militants in the Sahel on Sunday, which French President Emmanuel Macron told a regional summit should be fully operational by the autumn despite its current budget shortfall.

Some observers see the initiative of the G5 Sahel bloc — Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad - as forming the basis of an eventual exit strategy for around 4,000 French troops now deployed to the volatile region. But Macron said Paris had no plans to withdraw them.

Islamist militant groups, some with links to alQaeda, seized control of Mali’s desert north in 2012.

Though they were driven back a year later by a French-led military intervention, they continue to carry out attacks against on UN peacekeepers, Malian soldiers and civilian targets in violence that has spilled across Mali’s borders.

“Every day we must combat terrorists, thugs, murderers, whose names and faces we must forget, but whom we must steadfastly and with determination eradicate together,” Macron said at the summit in Mali’s capital Bamako.

15 killed in CAR:

Macron

At least 15 people died in clashes between UN peacekeepers and former rebels in the centre of the chronically restive Central African Republic, a humanitarian source said Sunday.

The violence broke out on Saturday in the market town of Kaga-Bandoro when rebels from the former Seleka movement of mainly Muslim fighters attacked the town “to settle an old score,” a source in MINUSCA, the UN mission which has some 12,000 troops in the country, told AFP.

“They (the former Seleka rebels) were confronted by the Pakistani and Burundian contingents stationed in the town,” the UN source said.

“The MINUSCA forces did their job and protected the civil population” in the town, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of the capital Bangui, the source added.

Seleka rebels briefly seized power in March 2013 and deposed the Christian President Francois Bozize.

9 killed in Niger:

Suspected Boko Haram Islamist militants killed nine people and abducted dozens more in southern Niger on Sunday night, the local mayor and a journalist said.

The attackers rode camels into the village of Ngalewa, about 50 km (30 miles) north of the border with Nigeria — home of the Boko Haram insurgency — said Maman Nour, the director of a community radio station in the nearby town of Kabelawa.

“They killed nine people and they kidnapped around 30,” said Nour, who had spoken to fleeing villagers.

Abba Gata Issa, mayor of the district, confirmed the nine dead and said around 40 women and children had been kidnapped.

Somalia bomb kills 2:

A roadside bomb struck a minibus north of the Somali capital Mogadishu late on Saturday, killing two people and injuring six others, police said.

The blast occurred on a busy road in the Elasha district less than 20 kilometres northeast of the capital, said Dahir Ahmed, a police major.

“The bomb killed the driver and a woman and injured six other civilians,” he told Reuters.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, although the Islamist al Shabaab group has carried out regular attacks on officials, government offices and civilian sites.

Zuma faces vote on Aug 8:

South African President Jacob Zuma, who has been weakened by growing criticism from within the ruling ANC party, will face a vote of no confidence in parliament on Aug 8, officials announced Sunday.

Opposition parties have pushed for the vote to be held in secret, hoping to encourage ANC lawmakers to vote Zuma out of office after a series of corruption scandals.

But the president retains strong support from many lawmakers in the African National Congress, which led the fight against apartheid.

In the last two years, Zuma has easily survived three votes of no confidence and a separate parliament vote to remove him from office.