Violence in C. Nigeria kills 55:

Afghan women wait in line to vote at a polling centre for the country’s legislative election in Herat province on Oct 20. Afghans are bracing for more deadly violence on Oct 20 as voting gets under way in the long-delayed legislative election

that the Taleban has vowed to attack. (AFP)

month during a massive operation targeting diamond smuggling, a minister said Saturday.

On a visit to Dundo in northern Angola on the border with DR Congo, Pedro Sebastiao dismissed allegations that the migrants had been violently expelled and often beaten by police.

Sebastiao, a state minister and the head of presidential security who is in charge of the operation, told travelling reporters that diamonds worth more than $1 million had been seized.

He said that the migrants had all left voluntarily, and 231 premises for illegal diamond trading had been closed and 59 weapons seized. (AFP)

Nigeria’s government says 55 people have been killed in the latest eruption of communal violence in north-central Kaduna state.

A spokesman says President Muhammadu Buhari condemns the fighting that led to Thursday’s killings in Kasuwan Magani and that “frequent resort to bloodshed by Nigerians over misunderstandings that can be resolved peacefully is worrisome.”

Kaduna’s governor cites the state police commissioner as saying that more than 20 people have been arrested. The governor urges “peace and harmony despite ethnic

Buhari

Assoumani

and religious diversity.”

Central Nigeria has seen bouts of deadly communal violence that some blame on ethnic and religious differences and others blame on tensions over increasingly scarce resources in Africa’s most populous nation.

Nigeria is about equally divided between a largely Christian south and Muslim north. (AP)