Beneath the bustle of Kinshasa’s sprawling Masina Market, a quiet, high-stakes trade continues nearly unabated: the sale of wild meat from the Congo Basin’s vast ancient forests. Unlike the openly displayed buckets of squirming edible caterpillars tended by market women, most exotic wild game — from giant swamp rodents to severed antelope carcasses — stays hidden, only brought out for customers who know to ask. For millions across Central and West Africa, wild meat, locally called *viande de brousse*, is far more than sustenance: it is a deeply ingrained cultural tradition, a primary source of affordable animal protein, and a livelihood for thousands of small-scale vendors. Even the ongoing deadly Ebola outbreak ravaging remote eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has done little to curb steady consumer demand for the forest-sourced product.
标签： Africa
非洲
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‘Gifts’ from a lover and ‘botched’ cocaine raids: Police inquiry grips South Africa
South Africa’s high-stakes public inquiry into widespread police infiltration by organized criminal networks has wrapped up its second phase of hearings, delivering a string of explosive testimonies that have gripped the nation ahead of its final reporting deadline.
Modeled after a binge-worthy hit crime series, the inquiry launched last year after senior police general Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi went public with damning claims that crime syndicates had embedded themselves at the highest levels of South Africa’s police service and national government. The first public phase of the inquiry, led by retired Constitutional Court Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga, ran from September to December 2025, and the second iteration of the real-life investigation just concluded, with a new interim report submitted to President Cyril Ramaphosa this past Friday. Like the first interim document, this report remains classified, but the public hearings over the past two months have already laid bare shocking gaps in security, systemic graft, and mismanagement that have kept South Africans talking. Ahead of the third and final phase of hearings kicking off next month, here’s a breakdown of the most notable moments from 64 days of testimony from 32 witnesses.
One of the most high-profile cases to emerge from this phase centers on a controversial police healthcare tender awarded in 2024. Senior police brigadier Rachel Matjeng, who oversaw the bidding process, was called to testify over the award of a contract for police health services to Medicare24 Tshwane District, a company owned by infamous businessman Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala. The contract was terminated just one year after it was signed, and Matjeng alongside more than a dozen other senior police officers have since been formally charged over their involvement in the tainted award process. None of the accused have yet entered pleas in court.
In a surprising testimony before the commission, Matjeng rejected allegations that she accepted kickbacks from Matlala, instead revealing the pair had maintained an on-again off-again romantic relationship that continued until Matlala’s arrest in 2025. She confirmed Matlala had gifted her multiple items, including doses of the popular weight-loss drug Ozempic that she had requested. She also pushed back on viral online rumors that Matlala had paid for a Brazilian butt lift procedure for her, telling the commission, “So, for me, from my boyfriend [Matlala], I only ask for Ozempic, unlike those that ask for BBL”.
Matlala, who was named by police crime intelligence leadership last year as a core member of the notorious “Big Five” drug trafficking and criminal cartel that the inquiry says also carries out contract killings, cross-border hijackings, and kidnappings, has not yet testified before the commission. He remains in custody facing 25 separate criminal charges, including attempted murder, and has denied all allegations against him. Anticipation is high that he will appear to respond to the claims during the final phase of hearings.
Beyond the tender scandal, the inquiry has focused heavily on the highly suspicious handling of two massive cocaine seizures just one month apart in 2021. The first seizure took place in southern Durban in June 2021, when officers intercepted 541 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a shipping container of animal bone meal, with an estimated street value of more than 200 million South African rand ($12 million). Just five months after the seizure, the entire cache of drugs was stolen from a poorly secured building owned by the Hawks, South Africa’s elite police anti-crime unit, in what investigators widely believe was an inside job.
Major General Hendrik Flynn, a senior Hawks official, detailed a long list of critical missteps made by officers leading up to the heist. These included failing to collect DNA or fingerprint evidence from the crime scene, and choosing to store the massive drug haul in an inadequately secured facility despite the availability of more secure storage options closer to core police hubs. “I am of the view that it is no coincidence and that the sequence of events is indeed… by design,” Flynn told the inquiry.
The second 2021 seizure, 700 kilograms of cocaine valued at roughly $17.3 million recovered from an industrial warehouse in southern Johannesburg in July, has also raised major red flags for investigators. The cocaine was hidden inside black bags among imported lorry parts for a prominent local transport company, arriving in the country via Durban’s port. Lieutenant Colonel Nkoana Sebola, another senior Hawks officer, told the commission the entire operation was suspicious, noting that the first officers on site were operating outside of their official jurisdiction and appeared to be carrying out an unauthorized heist.
One of those officers, Marumo Magane, is a desk-bound analytics officer with no prior experience in drug investigations or large-scale busts. He told the commission he was called to assist by a senior traffic officer, who also had no formal qualifications to handle drug seizures and claimed to have received an anonymous tip. The pair entered the logistics company’s premises without a valid search warrant, accompanied by an alleged informant, and asked an on-site employee to open the container to verify the tip. After being asked to wait until the container reached its final destination in southern Johannesburg, Magane ordered that the drug bags be loaded directly onto his work lorry.
Suspicious warehouse staff contacted local police, and eventually Hawks investigators arrived on scene. Magane repeatedly denied any intention to steal the seized drugs, though he admitted to a string of major procedural errors, including tampering with evidence and moving the haul to his personal police-issued vehicle without contacting the official crime scene processing unit. When Madlanga pressed Magane, saying, “You were clueless, and you knew that you were clueless,” the officer simply replied, “That is correct, commissioner.”
Magane and several other officers were arrested over their roles in the botched seizure, but all charges were dropped in 2022 after prosecutors concluded there was no reasonable prospect of securing a conviction. Even more alarming, the inquiry heard that after the remaining portion of the 700kg cocaine was moved to a forensic science laboratory for storage, a 2025 audit found 136kg of the haul was missing.
The inquiry also shone a spotlight on Oupa “Brown” Mogotsi, an alleged police informant, political fixer, and former African National Congress member who is accused of being a central facilitator for criminal groups looking to infiltrate the police force. Mogotsi denies all allegations against him, and made headlines when he told the commission he survived an assassination attempt in an area east of Johannesburg ahead of his first testimony last November, saying, “I ran for my life” after his car came under gunfire. South African police opened an investigation into the incident and seized his vehicle.
During that first November appearance, Mogotsi made sensational unsubstantiated claims that Mkhwanazi – the whistleblower whose allegations prompted Ramaphosa to launch the inquiry in the first place – and the Zulu king were both CIA spies, a claim he later retracted. He was scheduled to return for cross-examination in March, but the hearing was postponed after he claimed he was too ill to appear. Madlanga dismissed his submitted sick note as “useless”, and Mogotsi was compelled to appear in May.
Before responding to questioning, Mogotsi first attempted to have lead commission counsel Matthew Chaskalson removed from the case, alleging bias and claiming Chaskalson was trying to coerce him into implicating another witness. After his motion was rejected, Mogotsi refused to answer most questions on the grounds that he could self-incriminate. In a striking turn of events just after his testimony concluded, Mogotsi was arrested by the Commission’s Recommendations Task Team (CRTT), a specialized police unit launched earlier this year to investigate referrals and evidence arising from the inquiry. The unit has made five high-profile arrests in recent months, many connected to the inquiry’s work. Mogotsi is facing a slew of charges related to the alleged assassination attempt, with prosecutors accusing him of faking the attack to garner public sympathy. He has vehemently denied the allegations and is currently applying for bail.
The Madlanga Commission is set to wrap up its work and submit its final public report to President Ramaphosa in August, when the full scope of the inquiry’s findings will finally be made available to the South African public.
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Ghana parliament passes anti-LGBTQ+ bill
In a deeply divisive legislative move that has drawn sharp international backlash, Ghana’s parliament has passed a sweeping new bill that criminalizes identifying as LGBTQ+ and promoting LGBTQ+ rights across the West African nation. The legislation, which now heads to President John Dramani Mahama for final ratification, carries penalties of up to three years in prison for anyone who openly identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer. Even self-identified allies – people who support equal rights for LGBTQ+ communities – face potential imprisonment under the text, with narrow exceptions carved out only for legal professionals, journalists, and healthcare workers who cover the community or provide life-saving care. A key mandate in the bill also imposes a legal requirement on ordinary Ghanaians to report any suspected prohibited activities related to LGBTQ+ people to local law enforcement.
Reverend John Ntim Fordjour, the ruling party Member of Parliament who sponsored the bill, defended the legislation to reporters immediately after the final parliamentary vote, framing it as a defense of Ghana’s traditional cultural and family structures. He emphasized that the new law would strengthen the country’s existing colonial-era restrictions on same-sex relations, which have been in place since British rule, making the existing regulatory framework “more robust, more encompassing, and more stringent” in addressing LGBTQ+ practices.
The push for strengthened anti-LGBTQ+ legislation comes after years of pressure from conservative religious leaders, who have pushed Mahama to enact tougher rules since he took office last January. The president has already signaled his clear support for the bill, stating shortly after his inauguration that he adheres to the belief that only two genders exist, and that marriage is exclusively an institution between a man and a woman. This is not the first time such legislation has moved through Ghana’s legislative process: a nearly identical bill passed parliament in 2024, but it never became law after then-president Nana Akufo-Addo declined to sign it amid ongoing legal challenges and widespread international pressure.
Global and regional human rights groups have roundly condemned the new legislation, warning that it poses an immediate and severe threat to the safety and basic human rights of LGBTQ+ Ghanaians. Human Rights Watch, one of the most prominent international organizations to oppose the bill, was an early critic, formally calling on Ghana’s constitutional and legal affairs committee to scrap the legislation entirely during its review phase last year. The organization says the new law not only puts LGBTQ+ people at heightened risk of violence, arrest, and systemic discrimination, but also creates a culture of civilian surveillance by encouraging ordinary citizens to monitor and report on their neighbors, colleagues, and family members.
The approval of Ghana’s bill marks the latest in a growing wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the African continent in recent years. In March of this year, Senegal’s parliament passed a similar law that imposes maximum 10-year prison sentences for same-sex sexual activity and criminalizes public advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights. Two years prior, Uganda enacted one of the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the world, introducing the death penalty for certain same-sex offenses and long prison sentences for anyone who promotes or identifies as LGBTQ+.
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Ghana’s parliament passes a bill criminalizing the promotion of LGBTQ activities
ACCRA, Ghana – In a landmark legislative vote that has reignited global debate over LGBTQ rights in West Africa, Ghana’s parliament passed a harsh new anti-LGBTQ bill Friday that introduces steep prison sentences for a range of activities connected to same-sex relations, from public advocacy to personal engagement.
The legislation, which incoming President John Dramani Mahama has already signaled he will sign into law, marks a major expansion of existing restrictions on LGBTQ people in the country. Under the bill’s terms, anyone found guilty of promoting or advocating for LGBTQ rights can face up to 10 years behind bars, while people who engage in same-sex sexual activity face three-year prison sentences. Operating a space for same-sex intimacy carries a five-year prison term, and the bill also formally bans all funding for LGBTQ organizations and related activities.
This outcome is the culmination of years of pressure from conservative religious groups that have long pushed for stricter anti-LGBTQ policies in Ghana. An earlier version of the bill cleared parliament in 2024, but then-president Nana Akufo-Addo refused to sign it into law, leaving the legislation in limbo. Undeterred, religious leaders and bill supporters kept up their advocacy through the 2024 election cycle, and Mahama ran on a platform aligned with conservative cultural values, giving the bill new life after his election.
Ghana is now part of a growing wave of African nations moving to entrench broader anti-LGBTQ laws into their national legal frameworks. Across the continent, 31 of 54 countries already criminalize same-sex sexual relations, many of which carry penalties including life sentences and even the death penalty in nations such as Somalia, Uganda, and Mauritania. The push for stricter laws has broad popular support in many socially conservative African countries, even as it draws fierce condemnation from the international human rights community.
Supporters of the new Ghanaian bill frame it as a necessary defense of indigenous cultural values and traditional family structures, arguing that LGBTQ rights run counter to widely held Ghanaian social norms. But critics warn that the law undermines fundamental constitutional protections for all Ghanaians and will open the door to systemic discrimination, harassment, and violence against sexual minority groups.
Human Rights Watch has issued a strong condemnation of the legislation, calling on Ghana’s government to uphold international human rights standards that guarantee equal treatment, freedom from discrimination, freedom of expression, and the right to privacy for all citizens, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Same-sex relations were already criminalized in Ghana under a colonial-era law that bans so-called “unnatural carnal knowledge,” but the new bill vastly expands that criminalization to include not just private same-sex activity, but also public advocacy, community organizing, and financial support for LGBTQ communities. This expansion carries tangible economic risks as well: when the earlier version of the bill was under consideration, Ghana’s Finance Ministry warned that enacting the legislation could put billions of dollars in international development financing and partner support at risk, a warning that remains unaddressed in the latest version of the bill.
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South Africa court weighs feud over the body of Zambia’s former President Lungu
Nearly 12 months after the passing of former Zambian President Edgar Lungu, a high-stakes legal conflict over where the former leader will be laid to rest landed in South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal on Friday. The bitter dispute, pitting Lungu’s surviving family against the current Zambian government led by his long-time political rival, has left Lungu unburied since his death in June 2025.
Lungu, who held Zambia’s presidency from 2015 to 2021, died at the age of 68 while receiving treatment for an undisclosed medical condition at a private hospital in South Africa. What should have been a period of mourning has devolved into a public standoff over his final arrangements, rooted in deep political enmity between Lungu’s camp and current President Hakainde Hichilema.
Hichilema’s administration has pushed to repatriate Lungu’s remains to Zambia for an official state funeral. In August, the Pretoria High Court ruled in the government’s favor, ordering that Lungu’s body be handed over to Zambian diplomatic representatives to be returned home for the ceremony. But Lungu’s family, which rejects any involvement of Hichilema in the former president’s funeral, refused to comply with the ruling and launched an appeal to the higher court to allow burial in South Africa.
During Friday’s oral arguments held in Bloemfontein, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, the lead lawyer for Lungu’s family, laid out the defense’s core position: the Zambian government’s claim to organize a state funeral has no legal standing, because all of Lungu’s presidential benefits were officially revoked before his death. Ngcukaitobi further emphasized that under prevailing legal principles, the wishes of Lungu’s widow should be prioritized when making burial decisions, overriding any competing claims from the state.
In response, Ben Stoop, legal counsel for the Zambian government, countered that the family and the administration had already reached a prior agreement that would allow Hichilema to attend the funeral and receive visiting international dignitaries. Stoop argued that the family’s current opposition amounts to a breach of that earlier mutually accepted pact.
The five justices hearing the appeal focused significant scrutiny on one key gap in the family’s case: the absence of written or clear verbal instructions from Lungu himself confirming his explicit desire to be buried in South Africa. While the bench acknowledged that Lungu may well have preferred not to have his political opponent lead his funeral, the lack of direct evidence from the former president leaves the family’s position on uncertain legal ground.
As of Friday’s hearing, the Supreme Court of Appeal has not announced a timeline for when it will issue its final ruling on the appeal, leaving the question of Lungu’s final resting place unresolved for the foreseeable future.
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Abula – Nigeria’s indigenous game with lofty ambitions
Forty years ago, on a modest school playground in Nigeria’s largest city Lagos, a new indigenous sport was quietly born. Today, its growing community of players and backers are convinced this homegrown game has what it takes to capture international attention and carve out a space on global sporting rosters.
Known as Abula, the fast-paced four-versus-four court sport takes its name from a beloved traditional dish of Nigeria’s Yoruba people. It was created back in 1984 by Elias Yusuf, a former physical education teacher who drew direct inspiration from the iconic meal to shape his game.
“Abula combines four classes of food in one meal. This game is a conjunction of four by four,” Yusuf explained in an interview with BBC Sport Africa, tying the sport’s structure directly to its cultural namesake. The traditional Abula dish typically features yam flour paired with assorted beef, jute leaf vegetable soup, peeled bean gbegiri soup, and a tangy tomato-pepper stew – a combination of four core components that translated directly to the sport’s 4v4 format.
Yusuf’s motivation for creating the game was straightforward: he wanted a new activity that would keep his students engaged, balancing fun with physical and mental challenge. The very first match, held in February 1984, pitted four teachers against four students – and the students claimed victory, setting a dynamic tone for a sport that would come to be defined by its blend of speed, technical skill, and strategic thinking.
Played on a hard 16-meter by 8-meter rectangular court, divided by a central net set 2.44 meters above the ground, Abula shares some surface similarities with both volleyball and tennis. Unlike volleyball, however, players do not use their hands to hit the ball: instead, they wield a custom rectangular bat, crafted from wood and textured rubber and weighing between 500 and 750 grams, to strike a standard tennis ball over the net.
The rules of the game are straightforward but demand sharp reflexes and tight teamwork. After a serve, each team is allowed just three touches of the ball on their side of the court before returning it to opponents. Rallies continue until one side fails to return the ball, earning the opposing team a point. Teams rotate serving, with each side getting four consecutive serves per turn, and points can be won by both serving and receiving teams. The first side to reach 16 points wins a set, though a 15-all tie requires a team to reach 20 points to claim victory. Matches are decided by best-of-three or best-of-five sets, depending on competition rules, and each side can make up to four substitutions, permitted twice per set.
Unlike many mainstream court sports, Abula places heavy demands on both physical mobility and cognitive speed. Players must constantly anticipate opponent moves, reposition themselves in an instant, and make split-second decisions on how to return the ball. “When it comes to Abula, you have to be very smart,” said Sylvester Ike, captain of the Bayelsa State team that competed at May’s Nigerian National Sports Festival. “You have to be a very quick thinker and have to be mobile. It’s a very cognitive sport.”
From its humble playground origins, Abula has gradually built a foothold in Nigerian sports. It has been an official event at the country’s biennial National Sports Festival since 1998, and is regularly played at military camps and school competitions across parts of the nation. Just a decade after its invention, the sport earned official recognition from the International Olympic Committee’s Sport for All programme, as well as support from the Nigeria Olympic Committee – a milestone that remains a source of pride for its pioneers and fueled efforts to expand the game across West Africa’s most populous nation. Even with that early win, Abula has yet to earn a spot at the African Games, a key stepping stone for regional sports.
Like many emerging indigenous sports, Abula faces significant growing pains: limited public funding, a lack of purpose-built infrastructure, and minimal mainstream media exposure have slowed its growth. Purpose-built Abula courts are rare across the country, most players rely on improvised equipment, and organized competitions are held infrequently. “For now, there is no budgeting provision for this sport,” said Olomo Agbadabina, president of the Nigeria Traditional Sports Federation, which oversees the development of indigenous games including Abula, Dambe, Langa, Ayo and Kokowa. “But with the coming on board of the present National Sports Commission, we have been assured that funding will not be a problem.”
Abula’s advocates frame these barriers not as dead ends, but as opportunities for growth. With targeted sponsorship and structured national promotion, they argue, the sport can expand rapidly, first across Nigeria, then into neighboring African countries, and eventually onto the global sporting circuit. “If we are properly sponsored, we can invite other African countries to play this game,” Agbadabina said. “It can be introduced first to the African Games, then to the Commonwealth Games and the ultimate one – the Olympics.”
That is an undeniably ambitious goal, but backers point to volleyball as a successful precedent: the globally popular sport also began as a local pastime before making the leap to international competition.
For its founders and long-time supporters, Abula is more than just a game – it is a uniquely Nigerian innovation rooted in local culture. In an era where sports fans around the world are increasingly seeking new athletic experiences and fresh narratives, Abula offers a one-of-a-kind product: a fast, tactical court game that is easy to learn but difficult to master.
Daudu Ajayi, a 70-plus-year-old veteran match official for the sport, says Abula’s unique blend of accessibility, fitness benefit and cultural identity gives it broad global appeal. “Abula is very good for the body. If you play Abula, you look young,” he said. “If you see me now, you think I’m under 50. Whereas I’m over 70.”
That combination of physical activity and enjoyment has helped Abula maintain a loyal local following over four decades, particularly in school and community tournaments. Though it remains rooted in Nigeria today, its players, officials and pioneers are convinced the sport is ready to reach a global audience.
“I would say Abula has now got into its peak because we now have vibrant young men like me playing,” Bayelsa captain Ike said. “Abula has everything to be in the international level.”
If Abula’s supporters succeed in their push for growth and recognition, the game that began with a group of students beating their teachers on a Lagos school yard could one day take the stage at the world’s biggest international sporting events.
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Kenyan police arrest 8 students on suspicion of arson after deadly girls school fire
NAIROBI, KENYA – A devastating early-morning fire that swept through a girls’ boarding school dormitory in central Kenya has left 16 young students dead and dozens more wounded, with law enforcement announcing Friday that eight female students have been taken into custody on suspicion of intentionally setting the blaze. Authorities are still working to unpack what led to the tragedy, with investigations ongoing to uncover a clear motive for the attack. The deadly incident has renewed long-simmering concerns over fire safety standards at educational facilities across East Africa, where inadequate infrastructure and emergency preparedness have left schools vulnerable to similar disasters.
According to Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the national police department overseeing the case, the eight detained students are suspected of planning and executing the arson attack at Utumishi Girls School, located in central Kenya. The fire broke out on Thursday morning, claiming 16 lives and leaving 79 additional people injured, many of whom were students residing in the destroyed dormitory.
In the immediate aftermath of the blaze, police held 30 students on Thursday for questioning, instructing their parents to leave the campus without their daughters and return for further updates Friday morning. DCI spokesperson John Marete outlined the scope of the ongoing investigation in an official statement, noting that investigators have conducted extensive one-on-one interviews with current students, teaching staff, and other on-site witnesses, while specialist forensic teams work through available closed-circuit camera footage to piece together the timeline of the fire.
“Detectives continue to record statements and analyze all available evidence to reconstruct the sequence of events, establish the full circumstances of the incident, and determine the motive,” Marete added, confirming that no clear motive has been confirmed as of Friday.
As investigations moved forward, many parents remained in a state of uncertainty Friday, lingering on the school campus with no official timeline for when the remaining students held for questioning would be released. One parent, who requested anonymity out of fear that her daughter could face retaliation for her mother speaking out, told the Associated Press that families have been left completely in the dark about the case. “We have not even been told about the eight that police have arrested,” she said. “We are just here and no one is giving us any information.”
The bodies of the 16 deceased students were transferred to a government hospital morgue Thursday, where forensic teams are currently conducting DNA testing to formally confirm their identities before they can be released to family members.
Deadly fires at educational institutions have been a persistent source of alarm for education officials across East Africa for years. Most schools in the region are built with overcrowded dormitories and classroom facilities, and very few have access to basic firefighting equipment or formal emergency evacuation plans. Past school fires have been linked to both accidental causes like faulty electrical wiring and intentional acts, often tied to student grievances over strict disciplinary policies or other institutional conflicts.
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Eight students arrested in Kenya after suspected deadly school arson attack
A devastating early-morning fire at a Kenyan girls’ boarding school has left 16 pupils dead and dozens of families anxiously awaiting updates on injured loved ones, as law enforcement announced the arrest of eight current students suspected of orchestrating the suspected arson attack.
The blaze broke out in the early hours of Thursday at Utumishi Girls Academy, located in Gilgil, roughly 120 kilometers northwest of Kenya’s capital Nairobi. The fire quickly spread through the dormitory, which housed 135 bunk beds and held hundreds of sleeping students, destroying the upper floor of the building. Initial conflicting reports on the fire’s starting location are still being clarified by investigators.
In an official statement, Kenya’s National Police Service confirmed that after conducting interviews with surviving students and school staff, alongside a forensic analysis of campus closed-circuit television footage, the eight students were formally identified as persons of interest linked directly to the planning and execution of the fatal fire.
Detectives traced the suspects, who were among 30 students initially summoned back to the campus for questioning, to their private residences across the country before taking them into custody. Students who had remained in the Gilgil area were also located and detained, with eight ultimately placed under formal arrest. Investigations remain ongoing to confirm the full sequence of events and the exact motive behind the attack.
This tragedy is far from an isolated incident in Kenya, where boarding school fires have become a persistent, deadly public safety crisis. Just two years prior, a similar dormitory blaze in central Kenya killed at least 21 people. A long-running review of these incidents shows that many have been linked to arson, often attributed to disgruntled students protesting strict school discipline, poor living conditions, or institutional policies. Other fires have been ruled accidental, but systemic failures have repeatedly amplified death tolls across the country.
Overcrowding in student dormitories, routine non-compliance with basic fire safety protocols — including blocked emergency exits and locked interior windows — have been cited as key contributing factors to the high number of casualties in nearly all major Kenyan school fire incidents. As this story develops, anxious families continue to gather at the school and local hospitals waiting for word on injured students who have begun returning for follow-up care and investigation interviews.
This is a developing breaking news story, updated by the original reporting team at BBC Africa. Additional details will be released as the investigation progresses, and audiences can access ongoing updates via the BBC News App or by following BBC Africa and BBC Breaking on social media platforms.
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Sudanese medical group accuses paramilitary force of killing 27 in attack targeting civilians
CAIRO – A deadly attack on unarmed civilian communities in Sudan has drawn international condemnation after a local humanitarian monitoring group documented the deaths of 27 people, including multiple elderly residents, during one of Islam’s most sacred annual holidays. The Sudan Doctors Network, a non-partisan group that tracks violent incidents across the conflict-torn nation, issued a statement Friday blaming fighters aligned with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for the Thursday assaults on multiple small villages in the al-Murrah region. This area sits west of Barah town in North Kordofan, one of the war’s most active frontlines, and has been free of any organized military presence from the opposing Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
The attack unfolded on the second day of Eid al-Adha, the “Feast of Sacrifice” celebrated by more than 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide, marking a violent interruption to a holiday focused on peace, community, and ritual. The monitoring group emphasized that the deliberate targeting of undefended civilian villages and the mass killing of residents in this brutal manner represents a clear, unambiguous violation of international humanitarian law. It added that the assault has further exacerbated the catastrophic humanitarian conditions that millions of Sudanese civilians have already endured throughout the 15-month full-scale conflict between the SAF and RSF.
Tensions between Sudan’s national army and the RSF, which built their power and influence during decades of former authoritarian rule, boiled over into open war in April 2023. What began as clashes in the capital Khartoum quickly spread across the country, with the Kordofan region emerging as one of the conflict’s central battlefields. Fighting across the area has intensified in recent months, with both sides deploying drone technology to strike targets deep behind enemy lines. The RSF and its allied militias currently control most of Sudan’s western Darfur region, as well as large swathes of Kordofan along the border with South Sudan – both resource-rich territories holding extensive untapped oil reserves and profitable gold mines. Control of Barah, a strategic population center in North Kordofan, has been a repeated point of bloody clashes between the two warring factions for months.
This latest attack comes on the heels of a string of mass casualty incidents across Sudan that have underscored the growing risk to civilians caught in the crossfire. Earlier this month, violent clashes between fighters aligned with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North and the Otoro tribe in South Kordofan left more than 61 people dead, including nine children. Just one week prior, a drone strike on a crowded open-air market in central Sudan killed 28 civilians and wounded dozens more.
To date, the ongoing Sudanese conflict has officially been linked to at least 59,000 confirmed deaths, a toll human rights organizations and aid groups warn is a drastic undercount. More than 13 million Sudanese have been displaced from their homes, with roughly half forced to flee across international borders, and large swathes of the country are already facing catastrophic famine conditions. United Nations data indicates that more than 30 million Sudanese – nearly two-thirds of the country’s total population – require urgent life-saving humanitarian assistance. Both the SAF and RSF have been repeatedly accused by the United Nations and independent global human rights groups of committing widespread war crimes and atrocities against civilian populations, including systematic ethnic cleansing, extrajudicial executions, and widespread sexual violence used as a weapon of war. Aid access to most active conflict zones across Sudan’s vast territory remains severely restricted, meaning the true human cost of the conflict will likely remain unknown for years.
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WHO chief lands in Congo to address rare Ebola outbreak amid distrust and insecurity
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — As frontline medical teams grapple with cascading challenges ranging from critical equipment shortages to community distrust and active armed conflict, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus touched down in Congo’s capital Kinshasa late Thursday to personally observe the response to a rare strain of Ebola outbreak.
In remarks to reporters gathered at Kinshasa’s airport, Tedros emphasized that his in-person visit was intended to send a clear message to affected communities: they are not facing this public health emergency alone. “Issuing directives from a comfortable office in Geneva is simple, but I am asking my staff to work side-by-side with local communities, and asking communities to take steps to protect themselves,” he explained. “My presence here reflects that shared commitment.”
The outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo Ebola virus — a subtype with no currently approved vaccine or targeted treatment — has already spread across three northeastern Congolese provinces, centered on Ituri province. As of this week, WHO data records 1,077 suspected cases and 238 suspected deaths across the affected region.
Frontline response efforts have been severely undermined by a crippling lack of critical supplies. In multiple hard-hit areas, overstretched health workers have even been forced to rely on expired personal protective equipment, including medical masks, when interacting with suspected patients.
Community tensions have further complicated containment work. Stringent infection control protocols for handling Ebola victims’ bodies directly conflict with long-held local burial traditions, sparking anger among residents that has boiled over into at least three separate attacks on local health facilities. Tedros highlighted two other major barriers to stopping the outbreak’s spread: mass population displacement caused by decades of armed conflict in the region, and widespread acute food insecurity.
A day ahead of his arrival in Kinshasa, Tedros issued an urgent call for a ceasefire in the conflict-torn northeast, arguing that public health work cannot proceed amid ongoing violence. “We cannot build community trust or isolate infected patients while bombs are falling,” he said.
Ituri province, located in northeastern DRC near the Ugandan border, has been plagued by sustained violence from the Allied Democratic Force (ADF), a rebel faction linked to the Islamic State, alongside a coalition of ethnic militias. Just weeks ago, early May attacks by the ADF left at least 40 people dead and destroyed dozens of civilian homes in the province.
The outbreak has also been detected in North Kivu and South Kivu, provinces south of Ituri where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group holds control over major urban centers including Goma and Bukavu. Two cases of the virus have already been confirmed among rebel fighters in the region.
Goma’s main airport, a critical logistical hub that coordinates most humanitarian aid deliveries into northeastern DRC, has remained closed since M23 forces seized the city in January 2025. The ongoing conflict in eastern DRC has already spawned one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes, forcing more than 7 million people from their homes across the region.
There was some positive development Thursday, however: a shipment of medical aid donated by the European Union arrived in Ituri, the epicenter of the outbreak. Hours earlier, the United States announced an additional $80 million in emergency assistance for the response, bringing Washington’s total commitment to the effort to more than $112 million.
During his Kinshasa press briefing, Tedros also pushed back against travel restrictions imposed by multiple countries in response to the outbreak, urging nations against implementing broad entry bans. “There are effective ways to manage risk and screen cases without imposing harsh, broad travel restrictions, and as an organization, we do not encourage that approach,” he stated.
The Trump administration recently drew criticism for its new restrictions: last week, it announced a temporary entry ban for non-US citizens and non-green card holders who have traveled to outbreak-affected nations including Congo, Uganda, and South Sudan within the previous 21 days. On Wednesday, the administration further announced that US citizens exposed to Ebola would be quarantined at a new facility in Kenya, rather than being repatriated to the United States for isolation. Congo’s neighboring countries, Uganda and Rwanda, have also recently closed their shared borders in response to the outbreak.
Reporting for this story was contributed by Banchereau from Dakar, Senegal.