 | Wars in the World |
Daily News on Wars in the World and on New States
| FOLLOW US ON: FACEBOOK X FLIPBOARD TELEGRAM |
Two Spanish journalists and the Irish director of a wildlife foundation were killed Monday in an ambush in eastern Burkina Faso, the Spanish government and officials in the African country said Tuesday.
The two journalists were working with the wildlife campaigner on a documentary about poachers in a national park bordering Benin when they were attacked by gunmen, Spain’s Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya said Tuesday in a press conference in Madrid.
Militants overrun an army base in northeastern Nigeria, killing more than 30 soldiers before pulling back in the face of air strikes, sources said.
The attackers were believed to belong to the regional offshoot of Islamic State. They hit the base in Mainok town in northeast Borno state on Sunday afternoon, three soldiers and a local resident told Reuters.
Rebels in northern Chad are ready to observe a ceasefire and to discuss a political settlement after the battlefield death of President Idriss Deby last week, a rebel spokesman said on Sunday.
The rebels, known as the Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT), came over the northern border from Libya on April 11 calling for an end to Deby’s 30-year rule. They reached as close as 200-300 km (125-185 miles) from the capital N’Djamena, before the rebels were pushed back by the army.
Chad’s long-serving President Idriss Deby has died from injuries sustained in clashes with rebels, the army said in a surprise announcement Tuesday, plunging a volatile region deeper into crisis.
Army spokesman Azem Bermendao Agouna told state TV said Deby — a longtime Western ally in efforts to quell Islamist militias in north Africa — died “as a result of his injuries on the front line.” Reuters said Deby had been visiting troops fighting rebels in the north of the country.
The Chadian army said on Monday it had killed 300 rebels who waged a major incursion into the north of the country eight days ago, adding that it had lost five of its soldiers.
A heavily armed rebel group launched a raid from its rear base in Libya on April 11, the same day as Chad’s presidential election that is expected to see the incumbent Idriss Deby Itno poised to extend his 30-year rule.