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A passenger ferry capsized on the Nile River in Sudan on Wednesday, leaving at least 15 people dead, a medical group said. The ferry, with at least 27 people on board, including women and children, sank in the Shendi district in northern Nile River province, said the Sudan Doctors Network, a medial group that tracks the country’s ongoing war. The group said at least 15 bodies have been recovered, while residents and rescue teams were still searching for at least six other people. Six people survived the tragedy, it said. The group urged authorities to deploy specialized rescue teams and equipment to accelerate search efforts. Such tragedies on overloaded boats are not uncommon on waterways in the African nation, where safety measures are often disregarded.

At least 30 people have been killed and an unspecified number injured in a road accident in northwest Nigeria, authorities said. The accident occurred on Sunday in Kwanar Barde in the Gezawa area of Kano State and was caused by “reckless driving” by the driver of a truck-trailer, Gov. Abba Yusuf said in a statement. He did not specify what other vehicles were involved. Yusuf described the accident as “heartbreaking and a great loss” to the affected families and the state. He did not provide further details about the accident. Africa’s most populous country recorded 5,421 deaths in 9,570 road accidents in 2024, according to data by the country’s Federal Road Safety Corps. Experts say a combination of factors including a network of bad roads, lax enforcement of traffic laws and indiscipline by some drivers produce the grim statistics. In December, boxing heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua was in a deadly car crash that injured him and killed Sina Ghami and Latif “Latz” Ayodele, two of his friends, in southwest Nigeria. Adeniyi Mobolaji Kayode, Joshua’s driver, was charged with dangerous and reckless driving and his trial is scheduled to begin later this month. Africa has the highest road fatality rate in the world despite having only about 3% of the world’s vehicles, mainly due to weak enforcement of road laws, poor infrastructure and widespread use of unsafe transport.

A drone attack by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces struck a vehicle carrying displaced families in central Sudan on Saturday, killing at least 24 people, including eight children, doctors said. The Sudan Doctors Network said the attack took place near the town of Rahad in North Kordofan province. The vehicle was transporting civilians who had fled fighting in the Dubeiker area. Among the dead were two infants, the group said. Several others were injured and rushed to medical facilities in Rahad, where hospitals are facing acute shortages of medicine and equipment, similar to much of the wider Kordofan region. The doctors’ group urged the international community and human rights organisations to take immediate steps to protect civilians and hold the RSF leadership accountable for what it described as grave violations. There was no immediate response from the RSF, which has been fighting the Sudanese military for nearly three years for control of the country. The attack came a day after an aid convoy of the World Food Programme was targeted in North Kordofan. The strike killed one person and wounded several others, said Denise Brown, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Sudan. Brown said the convoy was on its way to deliver life-saving food assistance to displaced people in the city of Obeid when it was hit. The trucks were burned and the food aid destroyed. “Attacks on humanitarian operations undermine efforts to reach people suffering from hunger and displacement,” Brown said in a statement. She added that last week another drone strike landed near a WFP facility in Blue Nile province, injuring a WFP staff member. The Emergency Lawyers group, which documents abuses in Sudan, blamed the RSF for the aid convoy attack. The Sudan Doctors Network described it as a serious breach of international humanitarian law and a possible war crime. US adviser for African and Arab affairs Massad Boulos condemned the attack, saying the destruction of food aid and killing of humanitarian workers was unacceptable and called for accountability. Kordofan has emerged as a key battleground in recent months. Earlier this year, the Sudanese army managed to break RSF sieges on two major cities in the region. Sudan has been in turmoil since April 2023, when tensions between the military and the RSF erupted into open war. According to UN estimates, more than 40,000 people have been killed, though aid groups say the true toll is far higher. The conflict has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, forcing more than 14 million people from their homes, spreading disease and pushing parts of the country into famine as fighting continues unabated.

Famine is tightening its grip on Sudan’s western Darfur region, with two additional towns now confirmed to be suffering from extreme hunger, according to a global food security monitoring body, as the country’s devastating war continues unabated. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said on Thursday that famine conditions have been identified in Umm Baru and Kernoi in Darfur. The warning comes months after the group reported famine in el-Fasher, the region’s largest city, which has been under siege for about 18 months and at times overrun by Sudanese paramilitary forces. Sudan has been engulfed in conflict since April 2023, when a power struggle between the national military and the Rapid Support Forces erupted into full-scale fighting. The war has displaced millions and pushed the country into what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The IPC had earlier said famine was also present in Kadugli, a city in South Kordofan province, and warned that at least 20 other areas across Sudan were at high risk of slipping into famine. The latest IPC report coincided with a deadly attack on Thursday in South Kordofan, where paramilitary forces struck a military hospital in the town of Kouik. At least 22 people were killed, including the hospital’s medical director and three other medical staff, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Network, which monitors the conflict. Eight others were wounded in the attack, though it was not immediately clear how many of the casualties were civilians. As fighting continues across large parts of the country, humanitarian groups have repeatedly warned that access constraints, insecurity and collapsing health and food systems are accelerating hunger and preventable deaths, particularly in conflict-affected regions such as Darfur and South Kordofan.

Sought by the Ethiopian government, Oromo rebel commander Jaal Marroo remains on the move to evade drone surveillance targeting him from the air. Marroo heads the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) from a network of remote forest hideouts in Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest region, home to an estimated 40 million people. The government has labelled the former student a terrorist, accusing the OLA of carrying out ethnically driven attacks that have killed civilians. However, speaking in a rare interview from one of his concealed locations, Marroo denied allegations that his forces deliberately target civilians. “Our war is not against the people,” he told The Associated Press. “It is against the brutal regime that has occupied and oppressed the nation for generations.” The Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) has been fighting Ethiopia’s federal government since 2018, although the conflict has often been overshadowed by other crises, including the 2020–2022 war in the northern Tigray region. U.N. investigators have accused the group of grave abuses such as killings, rape and abductions. Human rights organizations, while documenting violations by the OLA, say government forces have also committed serious abuses. Indiscriminate drone strikes, extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances are described as key features of the counterinsurgency campaign. “The research that we conducted puts both the OLA and the government forces in the middle of the conflict in terms of summary executions, in terms of torture, in terms of abductions, in terms of rape of women,” said Sarah Kimani, Amnesty International’s regional spokesperson. “Our report is able to point to both groups having been responsible for the atrocities that are being carried out in the Oromia region and that continue to be carried out against civilians in the region,” she told the AP. Read More: Eritrea withdraws from regional bloc as UN expresses concern over tensions with Ethiopia Civilians report widespread fear and displacement. Ayantu Bulcha said members of her family were killed after being accused of supporting the OLA, while others described harassment, extortion and ransom demands by armed groups. “Movement from place to place has become increasingly restricted,” said Lensa Hordofa. “It’s almost impossible to travel.” Access restrictions have limited reporting from Oromia, where aid delivery has been disrupted, schools closed and health facilities looted or destroyed. Analysts say insecurity persists despite recent government gains, leaving civilians trapped between multiple armed actors. “Oromia is very insecure,” said International Crisis Group’s Magnus Taylor, citing criminal groups alongside the insurgency.

At least 200 miners have died following the collapse of multiple shafts at coltan mines in Rubaya, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, a spokesperson for the March 23 Movement rebel group confirmed Friday. The majority of the victims were artisanal miners trapped underground, and the casualties also included women and children, the spokesperson added. The collapses took place on Wednesday and Thursday across several coltan mining sites in Rubaya, an area under rebel control since April 2024. At least 11 killed in minibus taxi-truck crash in South Africa Coltan, or columbite-tantalite, is a key source of tantalum, a rare metal essential for manufacturing advanced electronics. The United Nations estimates that Rubaya’s mines alone supply around 15 percent of the world’s tantalum.

At least 11 people, including a schoolchild, were killed in a collision between a minibus taxi and a truck in South Africa, officials said Thursday. The accident occurred in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal. According to Siboniso Duma, a provincial transport department official, the fatalities were reported at the scene based on preliminary information. Garrith Jamieson, spokesperson for private paramedic service ALS Paramedics, confirmed that 11 people died and several others sustained critical injuries. The driver of the minibus was among those trapped in the wreckage. Read More: 13 children killed as school bus collides with truck in South Africa The deadly crash comes just over a week after a head-on collision between a minibus taxi and a truck killed 14 schoolchildren in the country.

An assault by an Islamic State-affiliated armed group in eastern Congo killed at least 25 people early Sunday, a local human rights organization said. The victims of the attack, blamed on the Allied Democratic Force (ADF), included 15 men who were burned to death inside a house and seven others who were shot dead in Apakulu village of Irumu territory in Ituri province. Three more people were killed in the Walese Vonkutu administrative area, according to the rights group. “This tragedy happened around 4am and claimed at least 25 lives. This ADF incursion amounts to a real massacre,” said Christophe Munyanderu, president of the Convention for the Respect of Human Rights, which is based in Ituri. There was no immediate response from the ADF regarding the reported attack. Eastern Congo has seen a surge in violence in recent months, with repeated assaults by armed groups, including the ADF and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels. The ADF operates along the porous border between Uganda and Congo and has been responsible for numerous deadly attacks on civilians. The group originated as an insurgent movement opposing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni before being driven into Congo following military pressure. In July last year, a wave of ADF attacks killed more than 100 people. Ugandan and Congolese forces have been carrying out joint military operations aimed at dismantling the group.

Voting began Sunday in Myanmar’s final round of a three-stage general election, capping a monthlong process that has already ensured the military and its allies will retain control of the national legislature. Critics say the polls are neither free nor fair and are designed to legitimize the military after it ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government in February 2021. The army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has already won most contested seats, while 25% of parliamentary seats are reserved for the military, guaranteeing its majority. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, head of the current military government, is widely expected to assume the presidency. Suu Kyi, now 80, is serving a 27-year prison term, and her party, the National League for Democracy, was dissolved in 2023. Opposition parties largely boycotted the polls, citing unfair conditions, while a new Election Protection Law has penalized public criticism of the vote. The election is being held in three phases due to ongoing armed conflicts, and voting was not held in one-fifth of townships. Early results show the USDP and military together already hold nearly 400 of the 586 active parliamentary seats, well above the 294 needed to form a government. Final results are expected later this week, with the new government set to take office in April.

Gunmen abducted more than 150 worshippers during coordinated attacks on three churches in northwest Nigeria, a state lawmaker said on Monday. The attacks took place on Sunday in Kurmin Wali, a community in Kaduna state’s Kajuru area, while services were underway at an Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA), a Cherubim and Seraphim church, and a Catholic church, according to Usman Danlami Stingo, who represents the area in the state parliament. “As of yesterday, 177 people were missing, and 11 have returned, leaving 168 still unaccounted for,” Stingo said. Kaduna state police have yet to comment, and no group has claimed responsibility. Attacks of this kind are common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, particularly in the northern region, where armed gangs and extremist groups frequently target remote communities with limited security. 13 children killed as school bus collides with truck in South Africa Similar church attacks have previously sparked claims of persecution of Christians by U.S. officials, including former President Donald Trump. The U.S. carried out military strikes in Sokoto on December 25, reportedly targeting Islamic State operatives. The Nigerian government has rejected the term “Christian genocide” to describe the ongoing security crisis.