Day: November 25, 2022

TRIPOLI, The Libyan Anti-illegal Immigration Department, yesterday deported more than 200 illegal migrants to their countries of origin.

According to Nasser al-Khatroushi, head of the Deportation Office of the Anti-illegal Immigration Department, the migrants, who are from Egypt, Niger and Sudan, were deported by land to their own countries.

The deportation was done for the first time, in collaboration with the Anti-illegal Immigration Departments of Eastern and Southern Libya, the Libyan official said.

“Today (yesterday), we are very happy to see officers from Western, Eastern and Southern Libya gathered here in Tripoli, to solve the issue of illegal immigration, which is a complicated issue,” said Mohamed al-Khoja, head of the Anti-illegal Immigration Department.

Libya has become a preferred point of departure for illegal immigrants, who attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach European shores.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a total of 20,842 illegal migrants, including women and children, have been rescued at sea and returned to Libya.

In the meantime, 500 illegal migrants have died and 863 others gone missing, off the Libyan coast, on the Central Mediterranean route, the IOM said.– NNN-LANA

Source: Nam News Network

Jihadists aligned with the Islamic State group are advancing in northeastern Mali, prompting terrified citizens to flee their homes, sources there say.

The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) launched an offensive in the Gao and Menaka regions in March, triggering heavy fighting with local armed groups and rival jihadists.

“If nothing is done, the whole region will be occupied” by jihadis, a human rights campaigner, contacted by AFP on WhatsApp, said on the condition of anonymity.

Witnesses and other sources contacted by AFP confirmed the sustained ISGS push in this remote and dangerous area, and rights campaigners say civilians have been massacred.

The strategic towns of Gao and Menaka have long been in the forefront of Mali’s decadelong jihadi crisis.

Since 2012, thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, in an insurgency that has spread to neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso.

Despair at the toll prompted Malian army officers to mount a coup in 2020.

The junta has brought in Russian paramilitaries — a move that prompted France to pull out troops who had been battling jihadists for nine years.

Massacres

Outside the two towns, the region is largely desert, populated mainly by nomads.

They bore the brunt of clashes between pro-independence Tuaregs and the Malian army between 2012 and 2015. They are now caught in the crossfire between the ISGS on the one side and a motley array of armed groups on the other.

The latter comprise al-Qaida jihadis; pro-independence fighters who signed up to a peace deal with the government in 2015; and pro-government Tuareg combatants who had previously fought the pro-independence groups.

The U.N. and NGOs have reported repeated attacks against communities accused of abetting the enemy or refusing to join the jihadists.

Hundreds of villagers have died in massacres by ISGS fighters, Human Rights Watch said last month.

Eleven were killed Monday in a raid by gunmen on motorbikes on a camp for displaced people at Kadji, just outside Gao, local officials and humanitarian workers told AFP.

Moussa Ag Acharatoumane, head of the loyalist Movement for the Safety of Azawad, said a “climate of terror” prevailed.

“All economic life has come to a halt. The roads have been destroyed,” he said.

“[It’s] an unprecedented humanitarian crisis,” he said, adding that the town of Menaka was being swamped by displaced people.

A mayor in the Menaka administrative region said that in his district, “there’s nobody left.”

A U.N. document issued this month said that in the town of Gao, nearly 60,000 people had arrived.

Several sources said that the jihadis had moved into a vacuum left when France pulled its forces out of the region.

The border with neighboring Niger marks the limit of the fighting.

Niger’s army is being supported in the air and on the ground by foreign forces, including France’s Barkhane mission.

On the Malian side, the army has holed up in the town of Menaka, a tactic that leaves “the way open” for the jihadis, a local elected official — who has fled to Bamako — told AFP.

Stoning

He and others painted a gruesome picture of life in areas under jihadi control.

“If you’re not with them, you’re against them,” the official said.

Villages seized by the militants must pay an Islamic tax and submit to a brutal interpretation of Islamic law.

An aid worker in Ansongo said that in the village of Tin-Hama, an unmarried couple aged 50 and 36 were stoned to death in September.

“They dug a hole on weekly market day and placed [them] … in it up to their hips and then threw rocks at them,” the source said.

Pro-government forces are trying to muster outside help for their cause, a security source in Niger said.

One idea is to forge an alliance with the former rebels of the Coordination of Azawad Movements and the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), a shadowy group led by an al-Qaida-linked Tuareg, Iyad Ag Ghali.

But the chances of creating a joint front are low, an African diplomat in Bamako said.

“Politically, it would seem quite a stretch for people to team up openly with al-Qaida today,” the diplomat said.

Source: Voice of America

M23 rebels were still fighting and advancing on one front of their offensive in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo on Friday as a cease-fire came into force, civilian and military sources said.

Clashes continued after the 1700 GMT deadline to cease fire near Bwiza, about 40 kilometers north of the provincial capital, Goma, local people told AFP by telephone.

“M23 is at Bwiza,” an administrative source said, adding that the rebels had taken over several villages in the area.

AFP was unable to independently confirm the account.

Bwiza was the stronghold of former Congolese Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, who operated there in the 2000s.

Fighting also took place during the day between the M23 and a Hutu militia in Bambo, 70 kilometers from Goma.

“Heavy weapons fire can be heard. People are in a panic,” a civil society representative told AFP.

A security source confirmed fighting between the M23 and soldiers from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu faction present in the DRC since the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.

Calm seemed to have returned to Bambo as evening fell.

The situation appeared more settled 20 kilometers north of Goma, where a front line has formed during the last two weeks close to the town of Kibumba on national Highway 2.

DRC’s President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta met in Angola on Wednesday, agreeing to a deal on the cessation of hostilities in eastern DRC starting Friday evening local time.

M23 rebels were to withdraw from “occupied zones,” and if they did not, the East African regional force would intervene.

But the rebels, a largely Congolese Tutsi militia, said Thursday that the cease-fire “doesn’t really concern us” and called for direct talks with DRC’s government.

“Normally when there is a cease-fire it is between the two warring sides,” a spokesman for the rebels added.

On Friday, Bertrand Bisimwa, president of the M23, put out a statement in English saying that his group “accepts the cease-fire as recommended” by the Luanda summit. But he called on Kinshasa “to respect said cease-fire. Otherwise the M23 reserves itself the full right to defend itself.”

The March 23 group had been dormant for years but took up arms again late last year.

The DRC accuses Rwanda of supporting the rebels, a charge Kigali denies.

The rebels have recently seized swaths of mountainous Rutshuru territory north of Goma, a city of 1 million that they briefly captured 10 years ago.

Kinshasa has refused to engage with the M23, which it calls a terrorist movement, as long as it occupies territory in the DRC.

The M23 is one of scores of armed groups that have turned eastern DRC into one of Africa’s most violent regions.

Many such armed groups are legacies of two wars before the turn of the century that sucked in countries from the region and left millions dead.

Source: Voice of America