分类： world

KAMPALA, Uganda — A sweeping nationwide crackdown on unauthorized migration has led Ugandan law enforcement and internal affairs officials to detain more than 200 foreign nationals this week, with investigations linking many of the detainees to transnational human trafficking networks and organized cyber fraud operations, government representatives announced Tuesday.

The multi-location operation, which launched early Monday, unfolded across two key sites: a residential enclave in northern Uganda home to a large community of Nigerian migrants, and a tightly secured, closed-off residential compound in the heart of Kampala, Uganda’s capital. In total, 231 people have been placed in custody for questioning across both locations.

Officials with Uganda’s Ministry of Internal Affairs detailed that 169 detainees were discovered in the capital’s restricted compound, a self-contained apartment complex purpose-built to limit outside movement, complete with its own private restaurant and on-site amenities. Thirty-six of the people found at that site were women, and detainees held there held citizenship from across Asia and Africa, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Ghana, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and Malaysia.

The operation was launched following verified intelligence reports that large groups of foreign nationals were residing and working in Uganda without the mandatory legal documentation required for residency or employment, ministry officials confirmed. During the raids, many detainees were found to be in possession of no valid passport or identity paperwork at all.

In an official public statement, the ministry outlined the preliminary findings from the operation: “Some individuals have claimed they were trafficked into Uganda with false promises of formal employment. Others were directly engaged in cyber-scamming activities. A few were found in possession of materials linking them to additional other criminal enterprises.”

Simon Peter Mundeyi, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, explained to the Associated Press that the detainees are currently being held at two separate processing facilities and divided into three distinct categories for assessment: confirmed or suspected trafficking victims, alleged criminal perpetrators of trafficking and cybercrime, and migrants who simply overstayed their valid visas without engaging in any illegal activity.

Mundeyi confirmed that both trafficking victims and visa overstayers will be assisted to process voluntary departure from Uganda, though they will be required to cover the cost of their own return travel tickets. Suspected ringleaders of trafficking and fraud networks, by contrast, will face formal criminal prosecution in Ugandan courts before potential deportation following any completed sentence.

Unlike many regional peers, Uganda has long cultivated a reputation for being open to foreign arrivals and hosting displaced people. The East African nation currently hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing violent conflict in neighboring states including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and South Sudan. It also maintains a liberal visa policy that waives entry visa requirements for short-term visits from citizens of dozens of African and global countries.

Amid a fresh wave of armed conflict in South Sudan’s Jonglei State, thousands of displaced civilians trapped in an isolated, swamp-ringed village have been blocked from receiving emergency humanitarian aid by government officials, military and local authorities, according to eyewitness accounts and statements from leading international aid organizations interviewed by the Associated Press.

The crisis began in December 2023, when opposition forces aligned with Riek Machar — the long-time political rival of President Salva Kiir who was suspended from his post as first vice president and placed under house arrest last year over alleged subversion — seized multiple military outposts across Jonglei. Government counteroffensives the following month pushed thousands of civilians to flee their homes, many toward the remote settlement of Nyatim, a day’s walk from the contested town of Lankien. Among the evacuees was Thomas Nim, a 43-year-old pharmacist who trekked through swampland with his pregnant wife, three children and elderly mother to escape advancing government troops. “Some of the most vulnerable, like the elderly and children, ended up in Nyatim because they couldn’t make it any farther,” Nim explained to the AP.

Trapped in the desolate location with no access to clean water or sufficient food, displaced residents relied on a Starlink satellite internet connection to send out pleas for emergency assistance. Eyewitnesses report dozens of people have already died, many from apparent starvation, with residents reduced to foraging for leaves and wild roots to stay alive.

When international aid groups including Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) applied for official government clearance to deliver relief supplies to Nyatim, their requests were repeatedly rejected. “It was a ‘no’ from local and national authorities and from the military,” stated Yashovardhan, MSF’s South Sudan mission head, who uses a single name. WFP country director Adham Effendi confirmed the blockade, noting the agency had been blocked despite “numerous engagements with both national and local authorities” — an unusually public rebuke from an agency that has historically avoided public criticism of South Sudan’s government over aid access restrictions.

Both government and opposition representatives have traded blame for the ongoing crisis. Gatkhor Dual, an opposition aid coordinator in Jonglei, accused county commissioner James Bol Makuei of intentionally cutting off aid to the area because he believes Nyatim’s residents support the opposition. Makuei has countered that access is restricted because the population estimate of 30,000 cited by MSF is exaggerated, and claimed the main opposition group SPLM-IO is holding civilians hostage in the area to gain political leverage and attract aid near the county seat of government. But Nim, the displaced pharmacist who fled to Nyatim, denies any opposition military presence in the village.

While concerns over aid diversion are not unfounded in South Sudan — where armed groups on both sides have a long track record of seizing humanitarian supplies for military use, and the U.N. reports fighters looted more than two dozen aid-run health facilities during recent Jonglei fighting — the blockade has left thousands of vulnerable people with no source of life-sustaining support. Some residents have already abandoned the remote village and returned to their conflict-ruined homes out of desperation. “People are returning to their homes,” said Koang Pajok, one of those who left Nyatim. “There was no food and shelter.”

Delivering aid across South Sudan has long been a challenge, hampered by crumbling infrastructure, repeated attacks on river transport routes, and mandatory bureaucratic clearance from government officials. The ongoing crisis in Nyatim has deepened an already catastrophic humanitarian situation across the region: in the nearby community of Chuil, where the government has allowed aid access, MSF screening in March found more than half of 1,000 tested children were acutely malnourished. The aid organization has been forced to repeatedly expand its small treatment facility in Chuil from four beds to 100 to keep up with the influx of starving civilians.

Barred from overland or river access to remote areas, WFP has carried out airdrops of 415 metric tons of food to the Chuil region since March. But the arrival of aid has also drawn armed men with military weapons to the area, sparking fears the site could become a target for airstrikes. When a surveillance plane flew over the region in April, anxious civilians scattered, recalling that a similar overflight preceded a December airstrike on Lankien that killed at least 11 civilians.

The current crisis is the latest chapter in decades of cyclical violence in South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011 before descending into a civil war between Kiir and Machar that killed an estimated 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018. A 2018 peace deal formed a fragile unity government between the two rivals, but fighting has reemerged in recent months, with consistent reports that armed groups on both sides have weaponized aid to punish civilian populations aligned with opposing factions.

This reporting is supported by a grant from the Gates Foundation, with the AP retaining full editorial control over all content.

In a devastating act of violence that has deepened concerns over persistent insecurity in Nigeria’s restive northeast, gunmen aligned with the Islamic State group have killed at least 29 civilians in a targeted assault on a remote village in Adamawa State, local government officials have confirmed. The attack, which the terror group has claimed responsibility for without outlining a clear motive, unfolded in the village of Guyaku, located within the Gombi local government area, and unfolded over the course of several hours, according to state authorities. Witness accounts and official reports detail that militants first stormed a local football pitch where community members had gathered for a public event, opening fire indiscriminately on unarmed civilians before launching a coordinated arson attack that destroyed dozens of residential homes, local places of worship, and hundreds of civilian motorcycles. In the wake of the bloodshed, Adamawa State Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri traveled directly to the attack site to assess the damage and meet with affected community members, sharing on-the-ground photos of his visit and condemning the violence as a fundamental “affront to our humanity”. In a public post shared to his Facebook page, the governor’s spokesperson captured the raw mood gripping the small, close-knit community, writing that “the atmosphere in the community remains tense, with grief and fear evident” following the carnage. Many residents, the spokesperson added, have already fled their homes in search of safer ground, driven out by widespread anxiety that follow-up attacks could target the area in the coming days. Governor Fintiri moved quickly to reassure the public in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter, affirming that “We are intensifying security operations immediately to restore peace and ensure every resident feels safe in their home again.” The region where the attack took place, which sits along Nigeria’s porous border with Cameroon, has been plagued by near-constant violence linked to Islamist militant factions and local criminal gangs for more than a decade. The current wave of instability traces its origins back to 2009, when the jihadist group Boko Haram launched a full-scale insurgency focused on establishing an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria. According to international aid organizations, the decades-long conflict has claimed the lives of more than 35,000 people and forced over 2 million Nigerians to flee their homes as internally displaced persons, while violence has spilled across national borders into neighboring Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. In recent years, Boko Haram has fractured into rival factions, with the larger breakaway group, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), aligning itself with the global Islamic State network and carrying out regular attacks against civilian and military targets across the region. Earlier this month, Nigerian courts concluded mass trials that saw almost 400 convicted individuals handed down sentences for their ties to both Boko Haram and ISWAP, marking one of the largest crackdowns on militant affiliation in the country’s recent history. The latest attack comes as the Nigerian federal government faces mounting domestic and international pressure to rein in widespread insecurity across the country, with general elections scheduled for January drawing increased global scrutiny of the administration’s ability to protect civilians and maintain stability. Late last year, the United States launched what it described as “powerful and deadly” drone strikes against IS-aligned militants operating in northwest Nigeria, marking a escalation of international counter-terrorism cooperation in the region even as militant factions continue to carry out high-profile attacks against soft civilian targets.