Monday, June 11, 2012
After nearly six decades of conflict, the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) signed a ceasefire agreement on June 9-10 with a Burmese government delegation after talks in Karenni state capital Loikaw.
The agreement leaves the Kachin Independence Organization as the only ethnic armed group still fighting Burma’s government forces.
Aung San Myint, the general secretary no. 2 of KNPP, told The Irrawaddy on Monday that 17 of the 20 points on the agenda were agreed upon, with the outstanding three points shelved for discussion at the next meeting.
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Syrian army forces killed at least 35 people in intense shelling of central Homs Sunday, activists said, as opposition forces appeared to escalate operations in other rebel hubs and around the capital Damascus.
The renewed assault on Homs and other rebel areas came as the newly elected head of the exiled opposition Syrian National Council called for decisive action from the international community to “stop the killing machine in a decisive decision under [United Nations] Chapter 7.”
Kurdish activist Abdelbasset Sayda, who was named head of the SNC in Istanbul Sunday, also called on all members of the Damascus regime to defect.
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Sunday, June 10, 2012
Mali’s Tuareg rebels clashed overnight with their former religious allies, witnesses said Friday, after the two groups fell out over forming a breakaway state in the northern desert region they control.
The clash involving automatic weapons near the remote regional capital Kidal was the first between the rebel National Liberation Movement of Azawad (MNLA) and Ansar Dine. Both groups are made up of Tuareg tribesmen from different various clans and the fighting has raised fears of widening chaos in the vast northern swathe of the country.
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Friday, June 8, 2012
A bomb blast at the entrance of the police headquarters of northeast Nigeria’s Borno state killed many people on Friday, mostly police, witnesses and security officials said.
A police officer at the scene, who could not be named, said five police vans had been loaded with the dead.
“Many people, mostly members of the police, which include men and women, were killed in the explosion,” said witness Ali Alhaji in the city of Maiduguri, the focal point of an insurgency by Islamist sect Boko Haram.
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Thursday, June 7, 2012
Soldiers of the Democratic Republic of Congo army and rebels have clashed at an army base in the country’s east, killing at least 19 people in the latest outbreak of violence that has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
DRC officials said on Wednesday that the attack had been carried out by Mai Mai fighters, linked to former rebels who were at one point integrated into the army but deserted in recent weeks over the government’s decision to arrest a renegade general, Bosco Ntaganda.
Their uprising is believed to have dragged in armed fighters from neighbouring Rwanda, complicating fragile relations between the two neighbours. Clashes in the last two months have forced more than 100,000 people to flee their homes.
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