DAKAR, Senegal: Congo’s Kasai region is the latest deadly hotspot in the vast Central African country that has had violent rebellions for decades. Once again, children are among the most vulnerable victims.
Well over 1 million people have fled the fighting that began a year ago when Congo’s military killed the regional tribal leader of the Kamwina Nsapu militia. More than 3,300 people in the region have died, according to estimates by the Catholic church. The UN has counted more than 80 mass graves.
Across the once-peaceful region, children are forced to take up weapons, either recruited by militias or to defend their homes. Children make up more than half of the displaced people, said Yvon Edoumou, spokesman for the UN humanitarian office in Congo.
“We see families who say they are fleeing because militias were going into their villages, and most of the time we have one mother and two to four young kids, even toddlers and babies in their arms,” Edoumou said. “The men are almost nowhere to be seen. So children are taking a very heavy toll from all this violence.”
Children in the Kasai region are being forced to endure horrific ordeals such as abuse and recruitment into militia groups, the UN children’s agency says, with more than 850,000 left without basic services.
One 12-year-old told the agency he escaped from a militia group where he was a combatant. Now in a UN-backed safe house, he is trying to deal with the trauma.
“I was given things to swallow. Afterwards, they took a machete and hit me three times on the chest. Next they gave me plastic bags to swallow, saying that if I concentrate on something, I can become it,” he said. “After that, they hurt me all over to show that even if I am attacked, I can’t be hurt. In the end, they gave me a knife and stick to go and fight.”
He said he decided to leave “because promises weren’t kept. Also, lots of people had been killed.”
The boy wants to return to his family and go to school but faces the risk of stigma and violent reprisals.
About 440,000 children in the Kasai region could not complete their schooling last year, largely due to the violence and insecurity, UNICEF says. It has launched a campaign to get 150,000 children back into school.
Another boy, 16-year-old Edouard, was taking exams when the fighting reached his hometown. His school is among the 400 that UNICEF says have been attacked.
“There was the noise of gunfire. We had never experienced that in our lives. When we heard it for the first time, we were scared and we ran,” he told the agency. He said he lived in the forest with his family, surviving on leaves and edible roots.
With so many lives affected, the UN and other humanitarian organizations have been trying to gain a footing in the remote and impoverished Kasai region. And security concerns soared after the murder of two UN experts in March.
The biggest needs are water, food and medicine, particularly for children, Edoumou said. But funding is low. A $64.5 million UN request for support is not even halfway funded, he said.
Both Congolese and the international community are watching in dismay as the initial fighting between government forces and militias has shifted and made the region even more precarious.
“It has evolved into fighting between communities who up until months ago had been living together in a peaceful way,” Edoumou said.
Communities, including children, have turned to defending their homes and whatever ethnic rights their area demands, he said.
The UN’s human rights office has warned of ethnic cleansing and urged Congo’s government to prevent further violence in the Kasai region, which has been a stronghold of opposition to President Joseph Kabila’s administration. Security forces have been known to back local leaders seen as loyal to Kabila, while militia groups have supported those believed to back the opposition.
Congo’s long-delayed presidential elections contribute to the tensions. Though voter registration finally began this week for millions in the Kasai region, the electoral commission says the work won’t be completed until next year — defying an agreement with the opposition that called for a vote by the end of 2017.
Children flee, fight amid Congo’s growing Kasai violence
Children flee, fight amid Congo’s growing Kasai violence
Netherlands remembers World War Two dead amid tight security due to Gaza war
Earlier this week municipal authorities announced unprecedented security measures to keep the ceremony safe and avoid possible disruptions linked to the Israel-Hamas war
AMSTERDAM: Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Prime Minister Mark Rutte joined around 4,000 people on Saturday for the country’s annual World War Two remembrance ceremony amid restricted public access and heightened security due to the war in Gaza.
The ceremony on Amsterdam’s central Dam square, with the traditional two minutes of silence at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) to commemorate the victims of World War Two, passed smoothly despite fears that there might be protests.
Normally some 20,000 people attend the Dam commemoration without having to register. But earlier this week municipal authorities announced unprecedented security measures to keep the ceremony safe and avoid possible disruptions linked to the Israel-Hamas war.
At the opening of a Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam in March, pro-Palestinian protesters opposed to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza set off fireworks and booed Israeli President Isaac Herzog as he arrived on a visit.
Every town and the city in the Netherlands holds its own remembrance ceremony on May 4 and tens of thousands of people attend the events. The Netherlands then marks on May 5 the anniversary of its liberation from Nazi occupation in 1945.
Drone footage shows Ukrainian village battered to ruins as residents flee Russian advance
- Residents have scrambled to flee the village, among them a 98-year-old woman who walked almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) alone last week, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane, until she reached Ukrainian front lines
KYIV: The Ukrainian village of Ocheretyne has been battered by fighting, drone footage obtained by The Associated Press shows. The village has been a target for Russian forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Russian troops have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs. Ukraine’s military has acknowledged the Russians have gained a “foothold” in Ocheretyne, which had a population of about 3,000 before the war, but says that fighting continues.
Residents have scrambled to flee the village, among them a 98-year-old woman who walked almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) alone last week, wearing a pair of slippers and supported by a cane, until she reached Ukrainian front lines.
FASTFACT
Ukraine’s military has acknowledged the Russians have gained a “foothold” in Ocheretyne, which had a population of about 3,000 before the war, but says that fighting continues.
Not a single person is seen in the footage, and no building in Ocheretyne appears to have been left untouched by the fighting. Most houses, apartment blocks and other buildings look damaged beyond repair, and many houses have been pummeled into piles of wood and bricks. A factory on the outskirts has also been badly damaged.
The footage also shows smoke billowing from several houses, and fires burning in at least two buildings.
Elsewhere, Russia has in recent weeks stepped up attacks on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in an attempt to pummel the region’s energy infrastructure and terrorize its 1.3 million residents.
Four people were wounded and a two-story civilian building was damaged and set ablaze overnight after Russian forces struck Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, with exploding drones, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said Saturday.
The four, including a 13-year-old, were hurt by falling debris, he said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian state agency RIA reported Saturday reported that Moscow’s forces struck a drone warehouse in Kharkiv that had been used by Ukrainian troops overnight, citing Sergei Lebedev, described as a coordinator of local pro-Moscow guerrillas. His comments could not be independently verified.
Syniehubov said Russia also bombed Kharkiv on Friday, damaging residential buildings and sparking a fire. An 82-year-old woman died and two men were wounded.
Ukraine’s military said Russia launched a total of 13 Shahed drones at the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions of eastern Ukraine overnight, all of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses.
Sadiq Khan, Pakistani immigrant bus driver’s son, makes history by winning third term as London mayor
- Khan, an official with global renown, became the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when elected in 2016
- Born in London in 1970, he grew up in public housing the Tooting area and slept in a bunk-bed until he was 24
LONDON: Sadiq Khan, who was Saturday re-elected for a record third term as London mayor, rose from humble roots to spar with world leaders and bring consequential change to the British capital.
The 53-year-old Labor party politician – a former human rights lawyer brought up on a London public housing complex – comfortably defeated Conservative rival Susan Hall for a third stint at City Hall.
He now overtakes predecessor Boris Johnson as the longest-serving holder of the post, which notably has powers over the emergency services, transport and planning in the city of nearly nine million.
Victory continues a remarkable journey for the Pakistani immigrant bus driver’s son, who became the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when initially elected in 2016.
As mayor, he has made a name for himself as a vocal critic of Brexit and successive Conservative prime ministers, including Johnson, as well as for a feud with former US president Donald Trump.
The pair became embroiled in an extraordinary war of words after Khan criticized Trump’s travel ban on people from certain Muslim countries.
Trump then accused Khan of doing a “very bad job on terrorism” and called him a “stone cold loser” and a “national disgrace.”
The mayor in turn allowed an infamous blimp of Trump dressed as a baby in a nappy to fly above protests in Parliament Square during his 2018 visit to Britain.
“He once called me a stone cold loser. Only one of us is a loser, and it’s not me,” Khan told AFP during his 2021 campaign.
But Khan’s own tenure has not been without its controversies, particularly over last year’s expansion of an Ultra-Low Emission Zone into the largest pollution-charging scheme in the world.
The daily toll on the most-polluting vehicles prompted a fierce backlash in outer boroughs of Greater London, with anger at the extra financial burden during a cost-of-living crisis.
Khan has also been criticized for failing to get to grips with high levels of knife crime and since last year, his handling of large weekly pro-Palestinian protests.
Born in London in 1970 to parents who had recently arrived from Pakistan, Khan was the fifth child out of seven brothers and one sister.
He grew up in public housing in Tooting, an ethnically mixed residential area in south London, and slept in a bunk-bed until he was 24.
His modest background plays well in a city that is proud of its diversity and loves a self-made success story.
Khan still regularly recalls how his father drove one of London’s famous red buses, and his mother was a seamstress.
He is a handy boxer, having learnt the sport to defend himself in the streets against those who hurled racist abuse at him, and two of his brothers are boxing coaches.
He initially wanted to become a dentist, but a teacher spotted his gift for verbal sparring and directed him toward law.
He gained a law degree from the University of North London and started out as a trainee lawyer in 1994 at the Christian Fisher legal firm, where he was eventually made a partner.
He specialized in human rights, and spent three years chairing the civil liberties campaign group Liberty.
He represented Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam movement, and Babar Ahmad, a mosque acquaintance who was jailed in the United States after admitting providing support to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Khan joined Labor aged 15 when Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher was in her pomp.
He became a local councilor for Tooting in the Conservative-dominated Wandsworth local borough in 1994, and its member of parliament in 2005.
He still lives in the area with his lawyer wife Saadiya and their two teenage daughters.
Labor prime minister Gordon Brown made him communities minister in 2008 and he later served as transport minister, becoming the first Muslim minister to attend Cabinet meetings.
In parliament, he voted for gay marriage – which earned him death threats.
As mayor, he vowed to focus on providing affordable homes for Londoners and freezing transport fares, but – like many in power around the world – saw his agenda engulfed by the pandemic.
He is London’s third mayor after Labor’s Ken Livingstone (2000-2008) and Johnson (2008-2016), with widespread speculation he could eventually try to follow in his predecessor and become prime minister.
London mayor Khan wins historic third term as Tories routed in local polls
- Khan, 53, easily beat Tory challenger Susan Hall to scupper largely forlorn Tory hopes that they could prise the UK capital away from Labour for the first time since 2016
- In the West Midlands, where Tory incumbent Andy Street is bidding for his own third term, votes were reportedly being recounted and too close to call
LONDON: London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan on Saturday secured a record third term, dealing the Conservatives another damaging defeat in their worst local election results in recent memory months before an expected general election.
Khan, 53, easily beat Tory challenger Susan Hall to scupper largely forlorn Tory hopes that they could prise the UK capital away from Labour for the first time since 2016.
The first Muslim mayor of a Western capital when first elected then, he had been widely expected to win as Labour surge nationally and the Conservatives suffer in the polls.
In the end, he saw his margin of victory increase compared to the last contest in 2021.
It adds to a dismal set of results for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, as his Tories finished a humiliating third in local council tallies after losing nearly 500 seats in voting Thursday across England.
With Labour making huge gains, the beleaguered leader’s Conservatives lost crunch mayoral races in Manchester, Liverpool, Yorkshire as well as the capital and elsewhere.
In the West Midlands, where Tory incumbent Andy Street is bidding for his own third term, votes were reportedly being recounted and too close to call.
An unexpected Tory defeat there could leave Sunak with only one notable success: its mayor winning a third term in Tees Valley, northeast England — albeit with a vastly reduced majority.
Writing in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, Sunak conceded “voters are frustrated” but insisted “Labour is not winning in places they admit they need for a majority.”
“We Conservatives have everything to fight for,” Sunak argued.
Labour, out of power since 2010 and trounced by Boris Johnson’s Conservatives at the last general election in 2019, also emphatically snatched a parliamentary seat from the Conservatives.
It seized on winning the Blackpool South constituency and other successes to demand a national vote.
“Let’s turn the page on decline and usher in national renewal with Labour,” party leader Keir Starmer told supporters Saturday in the East Midlands, where the party won the mayoral race.
Sunak must order a general election be held by January 28 next year at the latest, and has said he is planning on a poll in the second half of 2024.
Labour has enjoyed double-digit poll leads for all of Sunak’s 18 months in charge, as previous Tory scandals, a cost-of-living crisis and various other issues dent the ruling party’s standing.
On Thursday, they were defending nearly 1,000 council seats, many secured in 2021 when they led nationwide polls before the implosion of Johnson’s premiership and his successor Liz Truss’s disastrous 49-day tenure.
With almost all those results in by Saturday afternoon, they had lost close to half and finished third behind the smaller centrist opposition Liberal Democrats.
If replicated in a nationwide contest, the tallies suggested Labour would win 34 percent of the vote, with the Tories trailing by nine points, according to the BBC.
Sky News’ projection for a general election using the results predicted Labour will be the largest party but short of an overall majority.
Its by-election scalp in Blackpool — on a mammoth 26-percent swing — was the Conservatives’ 11th such loss in this parliament, the most by any government since the late 1960s.
Speculation has been rife in Westminster that restive Tory lawmakers could use the dire local election results to try to replace him. But that prospect seems to have failed to materialize.
However, it was not all good news for Labour.
The party lost control of one local authority, and suffered some councillor losses to independents elsewhere, due to what analysts said was its stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
Polling expert John Curtice assessed there were concerning signs for the opposition.
“These were more elections in which the impetus to defeat the Conservatives was greater than the level of enthusiasm for Labour,” he noted in the i newspaper.
“Electorally, it is still far from clear that Sir Keir Starmer is the heir to (Tony) Blair.”
A British-Palestinian doctor was denied entry to France for a Senate meeting about the war in Gaza
- Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta was placed in a holding zone in the Charles de Gaulle airport and will be expelled, according to French Sen. Raymonde Poncet Monge
- Abu Sitta posted on social networks that he was denied entry in France because of a one-year ban by Germany on his entry to Europe
PARIS: A well-known British-Palestinian surgeon who volunteered in Gaza hospitals said he was denied entry to France on Saturday to speak at a French Senate meeting about the Israel-Hamas war. Authorities wouldn’t give a reason for the decision.
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta was placed in a holding zone in the Charles de Gaulle airport and will be expelled, according to French Sen. Raymonde Poncet Monge, who had invited him to speak at the Senate.
‘’It’s a disgrace,’’ she posted on X.
Abu Sitta posted on social networks that he was denied entry in France because of a one-year ban by Germany on his entry to Europe. Germany denied him entry last month, and France and Germany are part of Europe’s border-free Schengen zone. He posted Saturday that he was being sent back to London.
The French Foreign Ministry, Interior Ministry, local police and the Paris airport authority would not comment on what happened or give an explanation.
Abu Sitta had been invited by France’s left-wing Ecologists group in the Senate to speak at a colloquium Saturday about the situation in Gaza, according to the Senate press service. The gathering included testimony from medics, journalists and international legal experts with Gaza-related experience.
Last month Abu Sitta was denied entry to Germany to take part in a pro-Palestinian conference. He said he was stopped at passport control, held for several hours and then told he had to return to the UK He said airport police told him he was refused entry due to “the safety of the people at the conference and public order.”
Abu Sitta, who recently volunteered with Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, has worked during multiple conflicts in the Palestinian territories, beginning in the late 1980s during the first Palestinian uprising. He has also worked in other conflict zones, including in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
France has seen tensions related to the Mideast conflict almost daily since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas incursion into Israel. In recent days and weeks police have cleared out students at French campuses holding demonstrations and sit-ins similar to those in the United States.
