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Tigrayan rebels announced on Sunday that they have captured the northern Ethiopian town of Kombolcha, making it a rapid advance by the Tigray People's Liberation Front as federal forces begin a battle to recapture the strategic city of Dessie.
He replaces Debretsion Gebremichael, whose immunity from prosecution was removed Thursday.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International said Thursday that scores of civilians were killed in a \"massacre\" in the Tigray region, that witnesses blamed on forces backing the local ruling party.
The \"massacre\" is the first reported incident of large-scale civilian fatalities in a week-old conflict between the regional ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, winner of last year's Nobel Peace Prize.
\"Amnesty International can today confirm... that scores, and likely hundreds, of people were stabbed or hacked to death in Mai-Kadra (May Cadera) town in the southwest of Ethiopia's Tigray Region on the night of 9 November,\" the rights group said in a report.
Amnesty said it had \"digitally verified gruesome photographs and videos of bodies strewn across the town or being carried away on stretchers.\"
The dead \"had gaping wounds that appear to have been inflicted by sharp weapons such as knives and machetes,\" Amnesty said, citing witness accounts.
Witnesses said the attack was carried out by TPLF-aligned forces after a defeat at the hands of the Ethiopian military, though Amnesty said it \"has not been able to confirm who was responsible for the killings\".
It nonetheless called on TPLF commanders and officials to \"make clear to their forces and their supporters that deliberate attacks on civilians are absolutely prohibited and constitute war crimes\".
Abiy ordered military operations in Tigray on November 4, saying they were prompted by a TPLF attack on federal military camps -- a claim the party denies.
The region has been under a communications blackout ever since, making it difficult to verify competing claims on the ground.
Abiy said Thursday his army had made major gains in western Tigray.
Thousands of Ethiopians have fled across the border into neighboring Sudan, and the UN is sounding the alarm about a humanitarian crisis in Tigray.
Haile Selassie I , original name Tafari Makonnen (born July 23, 1892, near Harer, Eth.—died Aug. 27, 1975, Addis Ababa), emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 who sought to modernize his country and who steered it into the mainstream of post-World War II African politics. He brought Ethiopia into the League of Nations and the United Nations and made Addis Ababa the major centre for the Organization of African Unity (now African Union).
Tafari was a great-grandson of Sahle Selassie of Shewa (Shoa) and a son of Ras (Prince) Makonnen, a chief adviser to Emperor Menilek II. Educated at home by French missionaries, Tafari at an early age favourably impressed the emperor with his intellectual abilities and was promoted accordingly. As governor of Sidamo and then of Harer province, he followed progressive policies, seeking to break the feudal power of the local nobility by increasing the authority of the central government—for example, by developing a salaried civil service. He thereby came to represent politically progressive elements of the population. In 1911 he married Wayzaro Menen, a great-granddaughter of Menilek II.
When Menilek II died in 1913, his grandson Lij Yasu succeeded to the throne, but the latter’s unreliability and his close association with Islam made him unpopular with the majority Christian population of Ethiopia. Tafari became the rallying point of the Christian resistance, and he deposed Lij Yasu in 1916. Zauditu, Menilek II’s daughter, thereupon became empress in 1917, and Ras Tafari was named regent and heir apparent to the throne.
While Zauditu was conservative in outlook, Ras Tafari was progressive and became the focus of the aspirations of the modernist younger generation. In 1923 he had a conspicuous success in the admission of Ethiopia to the League of Nations. In the following year he visited Rome, Paris, and London, becoming the first Ethiopian ruler ever to go abroad. In 1928 he assumed the title of negus (“king”), and two years later, when Zauditu died, he was crowned emperor
Confirmed cases = 5,846
\t\tActive cases = 3,311
\t\tRecoveries = 2,430
\t\tNumber of deaths = 103
\t
John Hopkins Uni stats valid as of June 19, 2020
June 20: 4,000+ cases, quarantine period now 7 days
\tThe government has revised the quarantine period for persons entering the country from fourteen to seven days, the Ethiopia News Agency reported on Friday.
Confirmed cases = 4,070
\t\tActive cases = 2,969
\t\tRecoveries = 1,029
\t\tNumber of deaths = 72
June 18: 3,954 cases as tests pass 200K mark
\tEthiopia’s case load looks set to enter the 4,000 zone as 195 new cases took the tally to 3,954 confirmed cases, the 100th update from the Health Ministry disclosed.
Total confirmed cases = 3,954 (new cases = 195)
Total recoveries = 934
Total deaths = 65
Active cases = 2,953
\tFigures valid as of close of day June 18, 2020
June 13: Ethiopia passes 3,000 mark as deaths reach 55
\tA total of 268 new cases within 24-hours took Ethiopia’s tally past the 3,000 mark.
Confirmed cases = 3,166
\t\tNumber of deaths = 55
\t\tRecoveries = 495
\t\tActive cases = 2,614
\tJohn Hopkins Uni stats valid as of June 13, 2020
\tVIDEO
June 8: 2,070 cases, PM defends ‘no lockdown’
\tEthiopia crossed the 2,000 mark on Sunday when 86 new cases took the tally to 2,020.
Confirmed cases = 2,070
Deaths = 27
Recoveries = 344
Active cases = 1,647
Total tests = 142,960
June 3: 1,486 cases, community transmissions mounting
\tEthiopia’s Health Minister is worried over the spate of community transmissions of COVID-19.
[Nation] French President Emmanuel Macron has called for dialogue between the Ethiopian government and a rebel group, Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), in order to get a lasting solution to the conflict in the Tigray region, the Elysee Palace said in a statement.
FOCAC is an official forum that coordinates cooperation between the People's Republic of China and African States.
Participants will include the Extended AU Bureau, which includes the Republic of Kenya, the Republic of Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Republic of Zimbabwe, the Republic of Rwanda and the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
Other participants will include Chairpersons of Regional Economic Communities (RECs), with the Republic of Madagascar representing the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Chad for the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD) and the Republic of Rwanda for the East African Community (EAC).
The Republic of Gabon will represent the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Republic of Niger will represent the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Republic of Sudan will represent the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
Libya will represent the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), while the Democratic People's Republic of Algeria and the Federal Republic of Nigeria will participate as initiating members of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
There are now more than over 130,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus across the continent, with a number of African countries imposing a range of prevention and containment measures against the spread of the pandemic.
According to the latest data by the John Hopkins University and Africa Center for Disease Control on COVID-19 in Africa, the breakdown remains fluid as countries confirm cases as and when.
As of May 13, every African country had recorded an infection, the last being Lesotho.
We shall keep updating this list largely sourced from the John Hopkins University tallies, Africa CDC and from official government data.
SUGGESTED READING: Africa’s COVID-19 deaths pass 100,000 mark
Major African stats: May 30 at 7:00 GMT:
\t\tConfirmed cases = 135,375
\t\tNumber of deaths = 3,923
\t\tRecoveries = 56,401
\t\tActive cases = 75,051
Countries in alphabetical order
\t\tAlgeria – 9,134
\t\tAngola – 81
\t\tBenin – 224
\t\tBotswana – 35
\t\tBurkina Faso – 847
\t\tBurundi – 42
\t\tCameroon – 5,436
\t\tCape Verde – 405
\t\tCentral African Republic – 874
\t\tChad – 759
\t\tComoros – 87
\t\tCongo-Brazzaville – 571
\t\tDR Congo – 2,833
\t\tDjibouti – 2,914
\t\tEgypt – 22,082
\t\tEquatorial Guinea – 1,306
\t\tEritrea – 39
\t\tEswatini – 279
\t\tEthiopia – 968
\t\tGabon – 2,613
\t\t(The) Gambia – 25
\t\tGhana – 7,616
\t\tGuinea – 3,656
\t\tGuinea-Bissau – 1,256
\t\tIvory Coast – 2,750
\t\tKenya – 1,745
\t\tLesotho – 2
\t\tLiberia – 273
\t\tLibya – 118
\t\tMadagascar – 698
\t\tMalawi – 273
\t\tMali – 1,226
\t\tMauritania – 423
\t\tMauritius – 335
\t\tMorocco – 7,714
\t\tMozambique – 234
\t\tNamibia – 23
\t\tNiger – 955
\t\tNigeria- 9,302
\t\tRwanda – 325
\t\tSao Tome and Principe – 463
\t\tSenegal – 3,429
\t\tSeychelles – 11
\t\tSierra Leone – 829
\t\tSomalia – 1,828
\t\tSouth Africa – 29,240
\t\tSouth Sudan – 994
\t\tSudan – 4,521
\t\tTanzania – 509
\t\tTogo – 428
\t\tTunisia – 1,071
\t\tUganda – 329
\t\tZambia – 1,057
\t\tZimbabwe – 149
SUGGESTED READING: rolling coverage of the coronavirus outbreak in Africa II
In 1895 T. Thomas Fortune, then editor of the New York Age, and founder of the Afro-American League in 1890, was considered one of the leaders of African America. That year he gave an address at the Congress on Africa which met in Atlanta in connection with the Cotton States Exposition. His address appears below.
Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen of the Congress:
The map of Africa is no longer a Chinese puzzle. Its geographical mysteries have been solved. Its mighty lakes and rivers have been traced to their source, and fiction and cupidity have unlocked hordes of treasure by the side of which that of King Solomon’s mines was as the vastness of the Atlantic’s waste of waters to the smallest stream that, like a silver thread, wanders down the mountain side and sighs itself away into the sands of the desert. Railroads are spanning its immense distances, steamboats are navigating its waterways, and the electric wire has brought it into talking distance with Europe and America. Its limitless agricultural and mineral resources are being developed for the comfort and the happiness of mankind. Vast States have sprung into being, as if by magic, controlled by European colonists, so that already a South African confederacy has worked its way into the brain of Cecil Rhodes, whose empire is cemented with more human blood and tears than the East Indian empire wrenched into the British Government by the crimes of Lord Clive and Warren Hastings.
Never in the history of mankind has a continent been so rapidly subdued and its waste places made the habitation of civilized governments and its savage inhabitants brought into contact and under the control of civilization. More has been accomplished along these lines in Africa in the past quarter of a century than was accomplished by European colonists in America in the first one hundred and fifty years of their desperate struggles here to subdue the aborigines. Steam and electricity and gunpowder are responsible for this phenomenon. They are conquering forces against
Aid agencies fear the fighting - which has reportedly killed thousands and displaced many thousands more - could tip the Tigray region into catastrophe.
