标签： Africa

A devastating highway crash near the Algerian coastal city of Boumerdes, located just east of the capital Algiers, has claimed the lives of at least 25 people and left scores more injured, local government officials confirmed in a statement released Friday.

Algeria’s national civil protection department has announced that the root cause of the accident remains under active investigation, with no preliminary conclusions released to the public as of press time. All injured passengers have been rapidly evacuated to adjacent medical facilities across the region to receive urgent, life-saving care.

Algerian Prime Minister Sifi Ghrieb traveled to the crash site shortly after the incident to assess the response and speak directly with first responders and emergency service personnel deployed to the scene. Photographs from the location show the overturned passenger coach resting at the bottom of a deep ravine adjacent to the roadway.

This fatal crash is the latest in a string of deadly traffic incidents that have plagued Algeria’s road network in recent years. Last August, a separate bus collision close to Algiers resulted in 18 fatalities, per reporting from Agence France-Presse. Just four months later, in December 2024, another bus overturning in the southern Algerian region of Bechar killed 14 people.

Official data from Algerian road safety regulators underscores the severity of the country’s road safety crisis: in 2024 alone, a total of 3,838 people lost their lives in road accidents across the nation, while more than 37,000 others sustained non-fatal injuries in collisions and other incidents.

DAKAR, SENEGAL – In a public report released Friday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has leveled serious accusations against Russia’s state-controlled Africa Corps, claiming that a corps aircraft carried out an airstrike on a central Malian village last month that left eight civilians dead, among them three children.

According to the investigation compiled by HRW, a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 attack plane dropped two explosive munitions on the village of Kyrnia, located in Mali’s conflict-battered Mopti region, on June 15. The first bomb landed close to the village chief’s residence, killing his wife and three of his children. The second strike hit a small cattle market just a short distance away, killing four adult male civilians. Shockingly, HRW’s investigation found no fatalities among fighters from Jama’a Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic militant group that has held control of Kyrnia for six years.

The Associated Press has not been able to independently confirm the accuracy of HRW’s findings, consistent with standard journalistic practice for on-the-ground conflict reporting in inaccessible regions.

Mali has been trapped in a spiral of violent instability for more than 10 years. The country faces overlapping insurgencies from jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State – including JNIM – alongside a long-running separatist rebellion led by Tuareg groups in the country’s northern territories. Violence has accelerated sharply in recent months, after a joint offensive by JNIM and Tuareg separatist forces carried out the largest coordinated attack across Mali in more than a decade. The assault targeted key sites including Bamako’s international airport, the nearby military garrison town of Kati, and multiple population centers in northern and central Mali.

Those April attacks laid bare critical gaps in the Malian government’s counterinsurgency strategy, which has centered heavily on Russian military support since the country’s military junta cut diplomatic and security ties with former Western ally France. Russian military-linked forces have operated in Mali since late 2021, brought in to assist the military-led government in its fight against militant and separatist factions. Last year, Africa Corps – a unit that falls directly under the command of Russia’s Ministry of Defense – took over Russian military operations in the country, replacing the private mercenary outfit the Wagner Group.

To build its report on the June 15 strike, HRW said it conducted interviews with 19 separate witnesses with direct knowledge of the incident, cross-referenced witness accounts with high-resolution satellite imagery, and reviewed publicly released footage of the strike that was posted online by Africa Corps itself. In that footage, the corps framed the operation as a targeted strike against a gathering of terrorists. HRW’s researchers noted that while roughly 100 JNIM fighters were present in Kyrnia on the day of the strike, the majority of those fighters were gathered in a separate part of the village, far from the two sites hit by munitions. The group concluded that the airstrikes did not appear to target a clear, legitimate military objective, violating international laws of war.

HRW has called on Mali’s military-led government to open a full, independent investigation into the incident and hold any individuals found responsible for the civilian deaths accountable. The organization warned that failure to do so would make the Malian government complicit in potential war crimes. As of Friday, Russia’s Ministry of Defense had not issued a response to requests for comment on the HRW report.

A devastating humanitarian emergency has unfolded on the border between Morocco and Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta, where at least 18 migrants have lost their lives in a mass crossing attempt that left thousands of people stranded in the tiny territory with no basic shelter or support.

The crisis began earlier this week when thousands of migrants breached the fortified border between Ceuta and Morocco, pouring into Spanish territory in an unprecedented surge of arrivals that forced the Spanish government to deploy active-duty military personnel to the area. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is scheduled to travel to Ceuta on Friday morning alongside Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska to assess the unfolding situation firsthand.

Rachid Sbihi, head of a local workers association that represents Civil Guard officers, described the chaotic scene as nothing short of a “serious humanitarian crisis.” Speaking to reporters, Sbihi confirmed that new crossings are continuing even as emergency responders struggle to meet existing needs. “The reinforcements that have arrived are only helping the injured and other humanitarian efforts,” he explained, noting that thousands of migrants — including dozens of unaccompanied minor children — have been forced to sleep on public sidewalks and in city parks, with no access to warm shelter or basic hygiene facilities. Many more wander the streets of Ceuta with no clear destination or plan, leaving the entire territory in disarray. “It’s chaotic,” Sbihi added.

Of the 18 confirmed fatalities, most drowned while attempting the crossing by sea, while others were killed in a deadly stampede as crowds pushed through the breakwater fence at Tarajal beach, Sbihi said. Video footage captured on Thursday shows large crowds, predominantly of Moroccan origin, walking across Tarajal beach’s breakwaters onto local Ceuta roads. While most of the new arrivals are young adult men, video also captured entire families, including women and young children, making the crossing. Some migrants shouted “Viva España!” to an Associated Press freelance photographer documenting the event.

By late Thursday, the photographer observed a continued back-and-forth movement: new crowds gathered on the Moroccan side of the border preparing to cross, while some of the people who had already entered Ceuta were attempting to return to Morocco.

To date, the root cause of the sudden massive surge in crossings remains unclear. Moroccan government authorities have not issued any public statement on the event, and the country’s Interior Ministry did not respond to multiple requests for comment from reporters. Local Ceuta authorities have preliminarily linked the increase in arrivals to a recent ruling by Spain’s Supreme Court, issued earlier this month, which bars Spanish officials from immediately turning back migrants who arrive by sea without first granting them due process. That ruling does not apply to migrants who enter Spanish territory by land, including those who climb over the existing border fence. Even so, some migrant rights activists based in Morocco have cast doubt on that explanation, arguing that most migrants attempting the crossing would not have been aware of the nuanced Spanish legal ruling.

The chaos in Ceuta has already spilled over to impact other European nations, including Italy, which is another major destination for migrants traveling through North Africa. Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni has threatened to suspend Italy’s participation in the Schengen Area, the European Union’s open-border agreement, with Spain in response to the crisis — a move that experts have called symbolic, as Italy shares no direct land border with Spain. “To defend our borders and ensure the safety of our citizens,” Meloni said in justifying her threat.

Ceuta is one of two Spanish exclaves located on the northern coast of Africa, surrounded entirely by Moroccan territory. For decades, it has been a primary entry point for migrants seeking to reach the European Union, where many hope to access better economic opportunities or escape conflict and political violence in their home countries. Migrants typically make the short crossing from the Moroccan coastal town of Fnideq, swimming roughly three miles (five kilometers) to reach Ceuta’s shores, while others depart from the closer town of Belyounech where the crossing distance is shorter. Reporting for this story was contributed by Naishadham from Madrid.

In the vast and violence-plagued Sahel region of West Africa, Mali is now confronting its most severe security breakdown in a decade, after two once-disparate armed factions — an al-Qaida-linked jihadi network and a Tuareg separatist group — formed a tactical partnership that has sharply intensified attacks on state military targets.

This unprecedented alliance between Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the Sahel’s most powerful al-Qaida affiliate, and the newly formed Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a separatist movement fighting for northern Mali’s independence, marks a dangerous new turning point in a conflict that has stretched across decades. Analysts warn the coordinated campaign has already produced some of the deadliest assaults on Malian security forces and their international allies seen in recent years.

The scale of the escalation became clear in April, when the allied groups launched large, simultaneous attacks across multiple regions of Mali — the first coordinated offensive of its size in 10 years. Earlier this month, the partnership carried out a deadly ambush on a Malian military convoy, leaving dozens of soldiers dead or captured and ratcheting up pressure on the country’s ruling military junta, which has held power since a 2020 coup.

Data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), an independent conflict monitoring organization, confirms the rapid worsening of violence. Fatalities linked to militant attacks across Mali jumped 35% in the first seven months of this year, rising to 3,435 from 2,546 recorded in the same period in 2024.

“The JNIM and FLA gain clear strategic advantage from collaborating, because each acts as a force multiplier for the other,” explained Heni Nsaibia, ACLED’s senior analyst for West Africa. Nsaibia noted both groups share a core immediate goal: defeating their common enemy, which they identify as the Malian armed forces and Russia’s Africa Corps, the Kremlin-aligned paramilitary group that now supports the junta.

FLA spokesperson Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane confirmed the arrangement to the Associated Press, describing the partnership as “a form of tactical coordination” focused exclusively on military operations. Ramadane added that the groups have agreed that once northern Mali achieves independence, local communities will vote to decide what form of sharia law, if any, will be implemented in the region.

To understand the current crisis, it is necessary to trace the long arc of instability in Mali. The modern conflict first ignited in 2012, when a Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali opened a power vacuum that jihadi groups quickly moved to fill, pushing the entire Sahel — a vast semi-arid belt stretching from North Africa to the Atlantic coast of West Africa — onto a path of persistent, large-scale violence. In 2020, Malian soldiers seized control of the civilian government, justifying the coup by pointing to the ongoing security failure. That power grab triggered a wave of follow-up coups across the Sahel, which the Institute for Economics and Peace now classifies as the deadliest region on Earth, accounting for more than half of all global terror-related fatalities annually.

Analysts broadly agree that military rule has failed to reverse the security decline, and has instead allowed armed groups to expand their territorial control across Mali and the wider Sahel. To contextualize the current fighting, a breakdown of the major active factions follows:

### Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM)
Formed in 2017 from the merger of four separate al-Qaida-aligned factions operating in Mali, JNIM is widely recognized as the most powerful armed group in the Sahel and one of al-Qaida’s deadliest global affiliates. Its founding stated goal was to expel French counterterrorism forces, which were deployed to support the Malian government at the time.

Led by Iyad Ag Ghaly, a veteran Tuareg rebel and former Malian diplomat, JNIM operates across nearly all of Mali’s northern, southern, western and central regions. Last year, the group imposed a continuing blockade on fuel imports into Mali, severely disrupting supplies to the capital Bamako. It has also expanded its operations into neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso, and is pushing its influence into coastal West African states.

JNIM has forced the Malian military to spread its forces thin across vast swathes of territory, stretching the army’s operational capacity to breaking point. In recent years, the group has increasingly positioned itself as a legitimate alternative to the weak central government.

“JNIM has progressively expanded its influence, becoming an increasingly unavoidable interlocutor for some local communities and exercising de facto authority in certain areas where state institutions have only a limited presence,” said Beatrice Bianchi, an adviser for the Sahel-Sahara Security Strategies Centre.

### Azawad Liberation Front (FLA)
Founded in 2024, the FLA is the latest iteration of Tuareg separatist movements that have fought for northern Mali’s independence since the 1960s, shortly after Mali gained sovereignty from France. Separatist leaders have long argued that the central government in Bamako has systematically marginalized the northern region both politically and economically.

In 2012, a coalition of Tuareg rebel groups under the Coordination of Azawad Movements declared independence for the Azawad region, sparking a broader rebellion that aligned with the rising jihadi insurgency. A 2015 peace accord brokered by Algeria between the Malian government and rebel groups paused large-scale hostilities, but the ruling junta withdrew from the agreement in 2024 amid surging tensions, triggering a return to open conflict. In response, leaders from multiple separatist factions merged to form the FLA.

### Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP)
The Sahel branch of the Islamic State network, ISSP was formed by defectors from al-Mourabitoun, one of the four al-Qaida groups that merged to create JNIM. The Islamic State leadership formally recognized ISSP’s allegiance in 2022. Compared to JNIM, ISSP is far less prominent across Mali, with most of its operations concentrated in the Menaka region bordering Niger.

Unlike JNIM, which works to build local acceptance alongside its military campaign, ISSP’s explicit goal is to establish a global Islamic caliphate in the region, and it relies far more heavily on violence and intimidation against civilian populations. “Both organizations are responsible for significant violence against civilians, but JNIM has generally sought to combine coercion with efforts to build local acceptance, while the Islamic State has relied more heavily on overt violence and intimidation,” Bianchi said. The two jihadi groups are also frequent rivals, violently competing for territory and clashing over competing interpretations of jihad, reflecting the long-running global rivalry between al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

### Africa Corps
The Africa Corps is a Russian paramilitary force that replaced the disbanded Wagner Group after its 2023 mutiny, and falls under the direct command of the Russian Ministry of Defense. After seizing power, the Malian junta expelled French counterterrorism forces from the country in 2022, framing the move as a defense of national sovereignty amid the worsening security crisis. The junta then abandoned its long-standing Western security partnerships to turn to Russia, first engaging the Wagner Group as a security proxy, before the Kremlin replaced Wagner with the Africa Corps. The paramilitary fights alongside Malian government forces, but has been widely accused of systematic gross human rights violations against civilian populations.

### Pro-Government Auxiliary Forces
A number of smaller ethnic militia groups also support the Malian government, though their alliances are often fluid. These include the Dozo, a faction of former hunters that has become militarized, and Tuareg self-defense groups such as the Imghad Tuareg Self-Defense Group and Allies (GATIA) and the Movement for the Salvation of Azawad (MSA), both active in the Menaka region. One prominent militia, Dan Na Ambassagou, which targets Fulani communities accused of harboring jihadis, was once backed by the government but has since been renounced by state authorities.