World

KANO, Nigeria — Gunmen suspected to be linked to the Daesh on Saturday killed 10 people in the latest spate of violence in northeast Nigeria's Borno state, militia sources told AFP.

The 10 victims, nine men and a woman, were scavenging for metal scrap from vehicles burnt in military operations in Goni Kurmi village, near the town of Bama, when they were attacked, two militia sources told AFP.

"The 10 people were all shot," militia leader Babakura Kolo said. "The victims were in the village to scavenge for metal scraps when they ran into the terrorists who shot them dead," said Kolo.

The bodies of the victims were recovered by the civilian force and brought to Bama, according to Ibrahim Liman, another militiaman who gave the same toll.

The Nigerian army, deployed in the region, has not yet commented on the attack.

Militants have recently been attacking civilians collecting metal scrap, accusing them of spying on them for the military.

ISWAP, which split from mainstream Boko Haram terrorist group in 2016, has become the dominant threat in northeast Nigeria.

Late on Friday ISWAP militants also attacked the town of Monguno, killing three militiamen and abducting three civilians, according to security sources and aid workers.

The terrorist violence has killed over 40,000 people and displaced around 2 million from their homes in the northeast since 2009, according to the United Nations.

Despite ongoing insecurity, local authorities are encouraging displaced people to return to areas they consider safe, in a bid to wean them off humanitarian aid.

Among those living in crowded camps who rely on inadequate food handouts from aid agencies, some turn to felling trees for firewood and scavenging for scrap metal which they sell to buy food.

Already on June 7, 23 people searching for scrap metal were killed by gunmen believed to be from ISWAP in Magdala village in nearby Dikwa district, according to security sources.

And late last month, 30 others were killed in Mudu village in the same district.

GENEVA — The World Trade Organisation(WTO) agreed on Friday to temporarily lift patents on COVID-19 vaccines after two years of bruising negotiations, but experts expressed scepticism that the deal will have a major impact on global vaccination inequality.

The unprecedented agreement, sealed by all 164 WTO members after late-night overtime talks, will grant developing countries the right to produce COVID vaccines for five years "without the consent of the right holder".

Since October 2020, South Africa and India have called for intellectual property rights for coronavirus vaccines to be temporarily lifted so they can boost production to address the gaping inequality in access between rich and poor nations.

But Friday's compromise fell short of their earlier requests that the waiver apply to all countries — and also cover COVID tests and treatments.

Under the terms of the new deal, WTO members have six months to decide on whether to extend the measures "to cover the production and supply of COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics".

"This does not correspond to the initial request," said Jerome Martin, the co-founder of the Drug Policy Transparency Observatory, pointing to the fact that the deal only includes developing countries.

"We have to see what it does in the field, but it is not ambitious at all," he told AFP.

'Disappointing' 

James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, said it was "a limited and disappointing outcome".

"The fact that the exception is limited to vaccines, has a five-year duration and does not address WTO rules on trade secrets makes it particularly unlikely to provide expanded access to COVID-19 counter-measures," he said in a statement.

"The pressure this week was to reach consensus in order to make multilateralism look like it works, which seems to have been the main justification for producing this decision."

Max Lawson, co-chair of the People's Vaccine Alliance and Oxfam's head of inequality, singled out Switzerland, Britain and the European Union for "blocking anything that resembles a meaningful intellectual property waiver".

"The conduct of rich countries at the WTO has been utterly shameful," he said.

The agreement also disappointed the pharmaceutical lobby group IFPMA, which warned that “dismantling” patent protections would strangle innovation.

“The single biggest factor affecting vaccine scarcity is not intellectual property, but trade. This has not been fully addressed by the World Trade Organisation,” said IFPMA’s Director General Thomas Cueni.

And while vaccine doses were scarce early in the pandemic, that is no longer the case.

Nearly 14 billion doses had been produced worldwide as of mid-June, according to research group Airfinity.

As supply soars, some vaccine makers like the giant Serum Institute of India have stopped producing doses due to falling demand.

Yet many developing countries still lag far behind the rest of the world in vaccination rates.

While 60 per cent of the world’s population has received two vaccine doses, that number falls to 17 per cent in Libya, eight percent in Nigeria and less than 5 per cent in Cameroon, according to the World Health Organisation.

“Our focus now is to ensure we address demand by persuading global procurers for vaccines to source from African producers,” the South African government said in a statement.

Pharma groups have said that the logistics involved in distributing vaccines in developing countries is a far bigger hurdle to rolling out doses.

‘Wealthy countries failed’ 

Even India, which fought long and hard for the waiver, expressed doubts about whether the final compromise deal would have an effect.

Earlier this week, Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal said that “my own feeling is, not a single factory, not one, will ever come up with the agreement that we are finally trying to negotiate and which may get approved”.

“It is just too late,” he said in a statement.

It marks the first time the WTO has temporarily lifted patents on vaccines, though in 2001 it set up a compulsory licensing mechanism for HIV treatments.

Francois Pochart, a patent specialist at the August Debouzy law firm in Paris, said that the new WTO agreement is “a step forward” compared to those compulsory licences.

“Countries can decide on their own without having to make a request. The real novelty is that this waiver allows the country that produces the vaccine to also export to other markets, to another eligible member,” he said.

But Christos Christou, the president of Doctors Without Borders, branded the deal “a devastating global failure”.

“Despite lofty political commitments and words of solidarity, it has been discouraging for us to see that wealthy countries failed to resolve the glaring inequities in access to lifesaving COVID-19 medical tools for people in low- and middle-income countries.”

KABUL — Gunmen stormed a Sikh temple in the Afghan capital on Saturday morning, killing at least one member of the community and wounding seven more, the interior ministry said.

Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor said the attackers lobbed at least one grenade when they stormed the temple, setting off a blaze in a section of the complex.

Minutes later, a car bomb detonated in the area but caused no casualties, he added.

“One of our Sikh brothers has been killed and seven others [were] wounded in the attack,” Takor said in a statement.

Two attackers were killed in an operation to secure the temple following the raid, he said, with one Taliban fighter also killed.

While the number of bombings across Afghanistan has dropped since the Taliban seized power in August, several fatal attacks have hit the country in recent months.

“I heard gunshots and blasts,” Gurnam Singh, a Sikh community leader, told AFP from close to the scene of Saturday’s attack soon after the raid began.

“Generally at that time in the morning we have several Sikh devotees who come to offer prayers at the gurdwara,” he said.

Video footage posted on social media after the attack showed shattered pillars and walls in the temple’s main prayer hall, with debris scattered across the floor.

A section of a building near the temple also caught fire, an AFP correspondent reported from the area.

The windows of several residential buildings were broken from the impact of the car bomb. Nearby streets were littered with pieces of shattered glass.

Taliban forces cordoned off the neighbourhood, preventing journalists from speaking with residents and witnesses.

Some of Kabul’s other Sikh temples were closed for security reasons as reports of the attack spread.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for Saturday’s raid.

The number of Sikhs living in Afghanistan has dwindled to around 200, compared to about half a million in the 1970s.

Most of those who remain in Afghanistan are traders involved in selling herbal medicines and electronic goods.

The community has faced repeated attacks over the years. At least 25 people were killed in March 2020, when gunmen stormed another Sikh temple in Kabul.

The extremist group Daesh claimed responsibility for that attack, which forced many Sikhs to leave the country even before the Taliban returned to power.

Daesh has a history of targeting Afghan Sikhs, Hindus and other members of minority communities — including Muslim Shiites and Sufis.

A string of bombings hit the country during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended in Afghanistan on April 30, some of them claimed by Daesh.

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands — A UN-backed court sentenced two Hezbollah members in their absence to life imprisonment on Thursday for a huge Beirut bombing in 2005 that killed Lebanon's ex-premier Rafic Hariri.

Habib Merhi and Hussein Oneissi were found guilty on appeal in March by the Dutch-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) over the attack, which killed 21 other people and injured 226.

The court found Merhi and Oneissi distributed a video in which a fictitious group claimed responsibility for the attack, in a bid to protect the "real perpetrators" from a covert network in the Lebanese Shiite militia Hizbollah.

But the pair are unlikely to ever spend time behind bars as Hizbollah has refused to hand them over, as it has refused to surrender a third man, Salim Ayyash, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2020.

Presiding judge Ivana Hrdlickova said both Merhi and Oneissi were aware that Hariri would be killed in the attack, adding that the sentences reflected the "evil nature of terrorism".

"The appeals chamber therefore unanimously decides to sentence Mr Merhi and Mr Oneissi to life imprisonment, the heaviest sentence under the statute and the rules for each of the five counts on which they were convicted," she said.

The men were found guilty of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act, and of being accomplices to commit a terrorist act, accomplices in the intentional homicide of Hariri and of the 21 other people, and accomplices in the attempted homicide of the 226 injured.

The attack on Sunni billionaire Hariri, who had stepped down as Lebanon's prime minister in October 2004, triggered protests that drove Syria out of Lebanon after a 29-year military deployment.

Last act? 

The court was born in 2009 out of a United Nations Security Council resolution and eventually tried four suspects in absentia: Ayyash, Merhi, Oneissi and Assad Sabra.

The case relied almost exclusively on circumstantial evidence in the form of mobile phone records that prosecutors said showed a Hizbollah cell plotting the attack.

The STL originally convicted Ayyash and cleared the other three men.

It said there was no direct evidence of Damascus or its ally Hizbollah’s involvement, but that the attack probably involved state actors and that the state with most to gain was Syria.

But in March it found Merhi and Oneissi guilty after an appeal by prosecutors, saying the original trial judges had “erred” by saying there was a lack of evidence. They upheld the acquittal of Sabra.

All three convicted men remain at large as Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has refused to hand over any of the suspects or to recognise the court.

The sentencing could be one of the last acts by the STL as the cash-strapped court has warned it will close imminently due to a shortage of funds.

The court is estimated to have cost between $600 million and $1 billion since it opened and has been dogged by political issues in Lebanon and controversies over its price tag.

The closure means a further trial against Ayyash in a separate case involving three attacks targeting Lebanese politicians in 2004 and 2005 is now unlikely to ever take place.

The STL draws 51 percent of its budget from donor countries and the rest from Lebanon, which is grappling with its deepest economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.

ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil  — Police investigating the disappearance of a British journalist and Brazilian Indigenous expert in the Amazon brought the latest suspect arrested in the case to the search site on Wednesday, media reports said.

The suspect, identified as 41-year-old Oseney da Costa Oliveira, was escorted by officers with his face covered, a red-and-black hooded sweatshirt pulled low over his head, and placed on a police boat, in images shown on TV Globo, Brazil's biggest broadcaster.

Reports said the blue-and-white boat then set off for the spot on the Itaquai River where investigators are searching for signs of veteran correspondent Dom Phillips, 57, and respected Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira, 41, who disappeared on June 5.

Federal police declined to comment.

Oliveira, nicknamed "Dos Santos", was arrested on Tuesday in Atalaia do Norte, the small northern city that Phillips and Pereira were returning to when they disappeared in the remote Javari Valley after receiving threats during a reporting trip.

A man reported to be Oliveira's brother, Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, a fisherman nicknamed "Pelado", was arrested on June 7. Investigators are analysing a blood sample found in his boat, as well as suspected human remains found in the Itaquai River.

Witnesses said Amarildo da Costa had been seen following the missing men's boat at high speed shortly before they disappeared.

Phillips, 57, a long-time contributor to Britain's Guardian and other leading international newspapers, was working on a book on sustainable development in the Amazon.

Pereira, highly regarded advocate for the region's Indigenous peoples, was acting as his guide.

The Brazilian was on leave from his job as an Indigenous protection specialist at Brazil's federal agency for native peoples, FUNAI.

He had received death threats for his work helping Indigenous communities resist increasing incursions on their land in the Javari Valley, which sits near the borders with Colombia and Peru and has seen a surge of drug trafficking and environmental crimes such as illegal fishing.

MOGADISHU — Somalia's President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud appointed lawmaker Hamza Abdi Barre as the country's prime minister on Wednesday, with the new premier facing a host of challenges including a looming famine and an Islamist insurgency.

"The president wishes the new PM utmost success as he leads the government's ambitious reform agenda and calls on Somali people to render him their unwavering support," the presidency said on Twitter.

The 48-year-old MP from the semi-autonomous state of Jubaland replaces Mohamed Hussein Roble, whose 22 months in office were marred by a rancorous dispute with Mohamud's predecessor Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed that threatened to plunge Somalia back into violent chaos.

"I am very happy that I have your confidence Mr President, and this shows that you believe I can be trusted with this huge task," Barre told a joint news conference, promising "to work day and night" at the job.

"I took this decision after recognizing Hamza's knowledge, experience, and ability," Mohamud told journalists.

“I also ask the new prime minister to accelerate his priority tasks which include issues such as security, droughts, reconciliation... and to work on improving the country’s relationship with the rest of the world,” he added.

Past political tensions 

Mohamud — who previously served as president between 2012 and 2017 — unveiled his choice for prime minister just six days after he was inaugurated at a ceremony in Mogadishu attended by several regional heads of state.

His election in mid-May has stirred hopes that his presidency will draw a line under the political crisis that festered for more than a year under his predecessor, better known by his nickname Farmajo.

Roble was handpicked by Farmajo as premier in September 2020, but the two men fell out over long-delayed elections and a raft of political and security issues.

The former president also had confrontational relationships with several of Somalia’s states, particularly the semi-autonomous Jubaland and Puntland.

Regional authorities in Puntland and Jubaland have often clashed with the Mogadishu government over what they see as undue interference in their affairs.

Barre, whose name had circulated widely on social media before his appointment was officially announced, was voted in as an MP in Kismayo, the commercial capital of Jubaland in December, in a long-delayed and chaotic election process.

The father-of-eight has served in several public and political roles and from 2011 to 2017 he was secretary general of the Peace and Development Party (PDP), the precursor to the Union for Peace and Development (UDP) now led by Mohamud.

With a background in research and academia, the new premier has also been involved in the education sector, co-founding Kismayo University and leading a community-based network that aimed to rebuild the country’s schooling system after it was battered by the civil war.

‘Political stability’ 

In his inauguration speech on June 9, Mohamud vowed to foster “political stability through consultation, mutual endorsement, and unity among... the federal government and federal member states,” striking a contrasting tone to Farmajo.

Observers say his choice of Hamza — who has close ties with Jubaland President Ahmed Madobe — is a sign of his intent to build better relationships with Somalia’s regional leaders.

Hamza, who served as the chairperson of the Jubaland Independent Boundaries and Electoral Commission in 2019-20 and worked in the federal government for four years prior to that, is the first prime minister to emerge from Somalia’s Ogaden clan.

Madobe, who crossed swords with Farmajo but supported Mohamud in last month’s presidential election, also belongs to the same clan.

Somalia has not held a one-person, one-vote election in 50 years and few of its 15 million people played any part in choosing Mohamud.

Instead, polls follow a complex indirect model, where state legislatures and clan delegates pick lawmakers for the national parliament, which in turn chooses the president.