Monthly Archives: April 2021

Cape Town fire: Satellite images show the destruction caused by the blaze

África, África do Sul, Incêndio

Via: The South African

Satellite images from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel-2 Earth observation mission add a new perspective to the widespread destruction caused by the Cape Town fire, which broke out on Sunday, 18 April and burned for three days. An area of approximately 622 hectares (6.22 square kilometres), which is represented by an ugly fire scar in the images, was destroyed by the Cape Town fire. The Cape Town fire was reportedly started by a vagrant near Table Mountain National Park and spread quickly. There was significant damage to buildings at the upper campus of the University of Cape Town (UCT) — where students were evacuated — and invaluable works housed in the special collections library were lost.

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Chad President Idriss Deby dies visiting front-line troops

Chade, Crise Política, Eleições presidenciais, Segurança

Via: Aljazeera

Chad’s longtime President Idriss Deby has died of wounds suffered on the front line in the country’s north, where he had gone to visit soldiers battling rebels, the armed forces said. Deby, 68, “has just breathed his last defending the sovereign nation on the battlefield” over the weekend, army spokesman General Azem Bermandoa Agouna said in a statement read out on state television on Tuesday (20/04), a day after Deby was declared the winner of a presidential election. The exact circumstances of Deby’s death were not immediately clear. The army said the president had been commanding his army at the weekend as it battled rebels who had launched a major incursion into the north of the country on election day on April 11. Agouna also said a military council led by the late president’s 37-year-old son, four-star General Mahamat Idriss Deby, would replace him. A curfew has been imposed and the country’s borders have been shut in the wake of the president’s death.

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Burkina Faso: Ex-president Compaoré to be tried in Sankara murder case

África, África Ocidental, Burkina Faso, Crise Política

Via: Africa News

Burkina Faso’s former president Blaise Compaoré, now in exile in Ivory Coast, will stand trial for the assassination of his predecessor Thomas Sankara, a pan-African icon, during the 1987 coup in which he took power, lawyers told AFP on Tuesday. The case was referred Tuesday to the military court in Ouagadougou, after the confirmation of charges against the main defendants, including Blaise Compaoré, 34 years after the death of the “father of the revolution” Burkinabé, according to defence lawyers and civil parties. After Gilbert Diendere – his former right-hand man was prosecuted for complicity in murder, handling corpses and attack on state security. The former president was ousted from power by a popular uprising on October 31 2014.

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