标签： Africa

On Wednesday, Zimbabwean national police confirmed a sharp rise in the death toll from a deadly ferry capsizing incident on Lake Kariba, with 44 bodies recovered from the waters that straddle the country’s border with Zambia. The disaster unfolded on Tuesday, when the overloaded vessel, operated by a state-run government agency, tipped over while traveling across the large reservoir.

Initial official data from Zimbabwe’s national disaster management agency shows the ferry was carrying at least 114 ticketed adult passengers and five crew members when it capsized. By Tuesday evening, rescue teams had pulled 77 survivors from the lake. However, the full scope of casualties remains unclear, as authorities have not yet updated figures for injured or missing people. Crucially, the official passenger count only accounts for individuals who purchased tickets, meaning uncounted children below the minimum ticketing age may have also been on board. State broadcaster Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation has confirmed that children are among the fatalities, though formal official breakdowns of victim demographics have not been released to the public.

Regulatory records show the ferry was only certified to carry a maximum of 90 passengers, meaning it was operating 29 people over its approved capacity even before accounting for any unticketed children. The vessel serves as a critical transportation link for rural communities surrounding the lake, ferrying residents to and from the lakeside town of Kariba.

Local member of parliament Mutsa Murombedzi shared on-the-ground footage of the ferry’s final departure on Tuesday. The video captures witnesses on the shore voicing immediate concerns about whether the aging vessel could safely navigate rough, choppy water on its crossing.

Stretching more than 200 kilometers in length and reaching up to 40 kilometers wide in some sections, Lake Kariba holds the title of the world’s largest man-made lake by water volume. Created between the late 1950s and early 1960s via the construction of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River, the reservoir forms the official border between Zimbabwe and Zambia along its midline.

For Luul Mohamed, a 300-kilometer trek across parched Somali terrain with five young children ended with a desperate arrival in the southwestern city of Baidoa on August 3. With no food reserves and no clear plan for what comes next, Mohamed and her family are just one of hundreds of thousands of households forced to abandon their rural homes by a years-long drought that has pushed Somalia into one of the worst humanitarian emergencies of the decade.

Drought conditions destroyed all livelihoods in Mohamed’s home region of Middle Jubba, forcing her family to wander from village to village for nearly two weeks before reaching Baidoa, which has emerged as a primary refuge for people fleeing overlapping crises of water scarcity, food insecurity and persistent insecurity across southern Somalia. “We are very hungry and in a desperate situation,” Mohamed explained in an interview. “We have nothing to eat and can only place our hope in God, as He is the one who sustains us through this ordeal that culminated in our trip.”

What Mohamed’s family faces underscores a rapidly worsening crisis: years of sustained drought, ongoing conflict and crippling economic pressure have driven a surge in displacement, with growing numbers of rural Somalis packing what little they have left to settle in overcrowded displacement camps. Compounding this emergency, international humanitarian funding to address the crisis continues to shrink, even as hunger rates reach unprecedented levels.

Data from global humanitarian organization Plan International shows that roughly 2 million Somalis are now facing emergency-level food insecurity – more than double the number recorded just one year ago. The organization has already provided life-saving support to more than 200,000 people across Somalia this year, and it is joining Somalia’s national Disaster Management Agency in issuing an urgent appeal for scaled-up international intervention. Leaders of both organizations warn that the crisis could grow even more devastating if another extreme climate event hits the country later this year, as forecast.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization projects a more than 90% chance that El Nino conditions will develop by mid-2023 (corrected from original typo of 2026) and intensify during Somalia’s critical October-to-December rainy season, bringing a high risk of catastrophic flooding that would reverse what little progress communities have made to recover from drought.

Somalia has long been one of the countries most vulnerable to climate extremes, trapped in a repeating cycle of multi-year drought followed by destructive, landscape-altering flooding. These consecutive shocks have systematically eroded traditional rural livelihoods, displaced millions of people, fueled repeated outbreaks of preventable disease, and pushed food insecurity to catastrophic levels.

Today, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing prolonged drought are packed into sprawling, informal displacement settlements on the outskirts of Baidoa. Among them is Habiba Adan, who left her home in the Bay region’s Awdiinle settlement after four straight years of drought wiped out all her crops and killed her entire livestock herd. She resettled in Baidoa with her two adult daughters, and while she longs to return home to rebuild, she says continued drought and repeated failed harvests have left that dream impossible.

“The drought we are experiencing has stretched for four consecutive years, and this year, most crops have again been decimated,” Adan said. “Farmers were only able to harvest enough to sow their fields for the next season, leaving our future bleak. Here in these camps, we lack food and essential support. We have no food, water, or money, and we sit idly.”

Plan International data shows Baidoa is now home to roughly 1.6 million people, nearly half of whom are displaced from their original communities. One in five of these displaced households lacks consistent access to clean drinking water, the most pressing immediate challenge facing the newly arrived. With no local water sources left intact, many families are forced to purchase water delivered by private trucks at exorbitant prices that most cannot afford long-term.

Reena Ghelani, global CEO of Plan International, visited displacement settlements and medical facilities in Baidoa and the surrounding Bay region last week, meeting directly with families affected by the crisis. She explained that most of the displaced families she spoke with had stayed in their home communities for years, doing everything possible to survive repeated droughts, only leaving once every last resource was exhausted.

Many fled “after waiting and waiting year after year of drought and just surviving,” Ghelani said. “And now they say there’s nothing left. They have no water. They have no stocks. The animals have died. There is literally nothing left anymore.” She added that soaring global and regional food prices have placed even more pressure on families already struggling to scrape together enough to feed their children.

Children have borne the brunt of this crisis, with malnutrition rates reaching alarming levels across southern Somalia. Data released in May by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the global leading hunger monitoring body, shows that roughly half of all children under five years old in Somalia are facing acute malnutrition.

Plan International, citing data from partner organization Save the Children, reports that the number of children being treated for severe acute malnutrition – the deadliest form of the condition – in Baidoa has nearly tripled over just six months. Dr. Omar Abdikarin, a nutritionist working at a Baidoa hospital, says malnourished patients arrive from across the Bay region as well as neighboring Bakool and Gedo regions, overwhelming local care capacity.

“Malnutrition is prevalent in this region, and the majority of patients treated at this hospital suffer from malnourishment,” Abdikarin said. Beyond malnutrition, Ghelani noted that communities are facing widespread outbreaks of preventable and treatable diseases, including diphtheria, measles, malaria, cholera and acute diarrhea, stretching underfunded local health systems to breaking point.

The projected El Nino-driven heavy rains and flooding later this year add a dangerous new layer of risk to a country already reeling from multiple overlapping crises. Intense flooding could destroy what little remains of homes and farmland, contaminate already scarce drinking water supplies, and force hundreds of thousands of already displaced families to flee once again. Aid agencies warn that El Nino will push millions more into crisis before communities have had any chance to recover from the ongoing drought emergency.

For newly arrived families like Mohamed’s, the most urgent priority remains securing access to basic needs: clean drinking water and enough food to feed their children. Mohamed says her husband left the camp shortly after their arrival to search for day labor work on farms on the outskirts of Baidoa, hoping to earn enough money or find leftover crops to bring back to their children. A day after he left, Mohamed and her children were still waiting, unsure if he would return with good news.

Faruk reported this story from Mogadishu, Somalia.

Tensions in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region have spiked sharply following a reported drone strike by federal government forces that hit a local secondary school, leaving multiple people dead and injured amid a rapidly unraveling 2022 peace accord, multiple sources familiar with the incident have confirmed to BBC Tigrinya.

The attack targeted Merewa Secondary School in the Raya Alamata district, a facility that was closed for winter break at the time of the strike. Accounts of casualties differ between local Tigrayan military representatives and the region’s district administration: Tigrayan military sources claim three of their fighters were killed immediately in the blast, with seven more wounded and transported to nearby medical facilities. In contrast, district governor Daniel Tamrat has stated one civilian was killed and four additional civilians were hurt, adding that a neighboring river — a critical source of drinking water for local communities — was also damaged in the strike. As of Tuesday, the Ethiopian national military has not issued any official response to requests for comment from the BBC. A source familiar with the operation also told the outlet that the strike was carried out using Turkish-made drones loaded with 12 explosive munitions, confirming that Tigrayan forces had been stationed on the school’s grounds at the time of the attack.

The deadly incident comes at a moment of escalating political crisis in Tigray, just two years after the Pretoria peace accord was signed between the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Tigray’s ruling political party, to end the brutal 2020–2022 civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. Warnings that the fragile peace could collapse entirely have grown louder in recent months, after the TPLF moved to dissolve the regional interim administration established under the 2022 agreement and reinstated its pre-war governing council earlier this year. Both the Ethiopian federal government and the TPLF have repeatedly accused one another of failing to uphold their commitments under the peace deal.

A further layer of complexity has been added by shifting regional alliances: Eritrea, which fought alongside Ethiopian federal forces during the original civil war, has been accused of switching its allegiance to the TPLF. Last month, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told the country’s parliament that the TPLF was actively preparing to restart full-scale conflict in a collaborative effort with Eritrea, a claim that Eritrean authorities have forcefully denied.

The drone strike triggered widespread panic among residents of Merewa, a small settlement located roughly 31 miles west of Alamata town. Local officials also reported that heavy weapons assaults have become increasingly common across the lowland plains of the border area, particularly near Waja on the boundary between the Tigray and Amhara regions. Low-intensity clashes between federal and Tigrayan forces first broke out in western Tigray on 1 August, and while violence has calmed in that area over recent weeks, analysts warn that the latest strike could reignite full-scale hostilities across multiple fronts.

A massive, uncontrolled fire has broken out at Libya’s flagship Zawiya refinery after an attack by unidentified assailants, leaving emergency crews working around the clock to contain the inferno and prevent further damage to the country’s already fragile energy sector.

The strike, carried out via drone, hit the facility — located just west of the capital Tripoli — on Monday evening. It marks the third major attack on energy and critical infrastructure near Zawiya in a 48-hour period, according to initial reports from Libyan officials.

The National Oil Corporation (NOC), Libya’s state-owned energy authority, confirmed that a storage tank holding roughly 4.5 million liters of petroleum fuel took a direct hit from the drone. The impact ignited an intense blaze that ultimately caused the entire tank structure to collapse. In a statement following the attack, NOC warned that it may be forced to suspend all operations at the key refinery if a wave of targeted violence against energy sites continues unabated.

As of Tuesday, there have been no reports of fatalities or critical injuries linked to the fire. Libya’s Ambulance and Emergency Service confirmed that most people affected by the incident were treated on-site for minor smoke inhalation, with no patients requiring prolonged hospital care.

The Zawiya refinery holds outsized importance for Libya’s energy-dependent economy: it is the largest fully operational oil processing facility in the country, with a daily production capacity of 120,000 barrels of crude oil products.

The latest attack follows two similar strikes on infrastructure in the Zawiya area in the preceding 48 hours: an earlier drone strike targeted a naphtha storage reservoir, while a second hit a local water desalination plant that serves the refinery and surrounding communities. NOC has issued a formal condemnation of all three attacks, and has called on national security authorities to launch a full investigation to identify and prosecute the groups behind the violence.

The string of coordinated attacks on critical Libyan infrastructure has once again drawn global attention to the persistent political instability that has plagued the North African nation for more than a decade. Libya has remained a deeply divided state since a 2011 popular rebellion, backed by Western military intervention, toppled and killed longtime authoritarian leader Muammar Gaddafi, who had held power since a 1969 coup.

Today, two rival competing administrations control separate portions of the country: an internationally recognized government led by Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah is based in Tripoli in western Libya, while a parallel eastern administration is backed by powerful military commander Khalifa Haftar. The two blocs have continued to vie for full political and military control of the country, creating a security vacuum that has allowed repeated attacks on energy infrastructure — Libya’s primary source of government revenue — to occur with increasing frequency.