OVER 300 WOUNDED IN TANZANIA BLAST

More than 300 people, some critically injured, remain in hospital a day after the massive armoury explosion near Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s biggest city. Officials said the death toll has risen to 10, including six army officers killed at the ammunition dump. Investigations are under way into the cause of the blast next to the military base on the outskirts of the city.

One child drowned jumping into a river in the panic and hundreds more have still not been reunited with parents. President Jakaya Kikwete visited the Mbagala ordnance depot on Thursday, a day after the blast which caused mass panic and flashbacks of the deadly 1998 US Embassy bombing in the country’s main commercial centre.

“ Most of the children were running without knowing where they were going ”
Suleiman Kova Police commander. Dar es Salaam police commander Suleiman Kova told journalists: “The death toll may be higher since we are still compiling reports and search is going on in collapsed and burnt down buildings,” reported AFP news agency.

Criminals took advantage of the mayhem to loot the army barracks and surrounding civilian homes, said the authorities. The BBC’s Vicky Ntetema says more than 1,000 people were injured, a third of whom were admitted in various hospitals with multiple injuries.

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PIGS SLAUGHTER BEGINS IN EGYPT, FARMERS RESIST

Egypt started seizing and slaughtering pig herds on Thursday as a precaution against swine flu despite resistance by farmers and criticism from the United Nations, officials and farmers said. Egypt, already hit hard by bird flu, fears another flu virus could spread quickly in a country where most of the roughly 80 million people live in the densely packed Nile Valley, many in crowded slums around Cairo.

But the United Nations said the mass cull of up to 400,000 pigs was “a real mistake” because the new viral strain — a mix of swine, avian and human viruses — has not actually been found in pigs. Farmers in the most populous Arab country said the state had begun confiscating animals anyway.

“They have destroyed us. The pigs were our livelihood,” said 21-year-old Hanan Ahmed, whose family runs a small farm with around 25 pigs in Cairo. “They took them. They kidnapped them. And they beat them and us. They said they will take them to the slaughterhouse and kill them there,” she added, saying she had received no compensation.

The H1N1 swine flu virus is spread by people, not pigs. But culling swine, largely viewed as unclean in Muslim Egypt, could help quell any public panic. Pigs are mainly raised by the country’s Christian minority. Dozens of pigs were slaughtered in the early phase of the cull. Near the southern town of Minya, workers suffocated 25 piglets in plastic sacks and killed dozens of adult pigs and gave the meat to their owners, a local official said.

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W.H.O ISSUES ADVISE ON SWINE FLU SPREAD IN HOSPITALS

Countries should be on high alert for the new swine flu virus, tracking any suspect cases and ensuring medical workers do not spread it further, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday. Doctors and hospital staff must wear protective masks and gloves and wash their hands often to lower the risk of transmitting the new strain among themselves and patients, the United Nations agency said in fresh guidance on the outbreak.

“All countries should immediately activate their pandemic preparedness plans. Countries should remain on high alert for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said. The WHO has raised its alert level to 5, on a scale of 6, indicating a pandemic was “imminent”. (www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/swineflu/swineinfinfcont/en/index.html)

“At this stage, effective and essential measures include heightened surveillance, early detection and treatment of cases and infection control in all health facilities,” Chan told a news conference late on Wednesday. Laboratories must gear up to analyse quickly whether patients have the new strain and follow good biosafety measures, said Chan, adding the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was working to make diagnostic kits available to other countries and laboratories.

The new virus has killed up to 176 people in Mexico and is spreading fast. A dozen countries have reported cases of the H1N1 strain and Texas officials have confirmed a 22-month-old Mexican boy had died in the state while on a family visit, the first confirmed swine flu death outside Mexico.

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MADAGASCAN’S FEARS OVER SEIZED PRIME MINISTER

Concerns are being raised in Madagascar for the man named as prime minister by ousted President Marc Ravalomanana. Manandafy Rakotonirina, 70, was seized by heavily armed soldiers and police from a five-star hotel in the capital, Antananarivo, on Wednesday.

His family members say they don’t know where he is being held. Mr Rakotonirina was named prime minister this week by Mr Ravalomanana, even though he has been ousted from power by Andry Rajoelina.

The army helped Mr Rajoelina take over in March. The ousted leader is now in exile in Swaziland, but Mr Rajoelina’s administration accuses him and his supporters of being behind recent violent protests in the capital, in which at least two people died.

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NIGERIAN ELECTORAL OFFICER REAPPEARS FROM HIDING

A key election official in Nigeria has reappeared two days after going into hiding because she refused to announce the result of a state election re-run. The police had said Olusola Adebayo must come forward or be arrested.

She went to the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Abuja on Wednesday to say she would finish her job. Some parts of Ekiti State in Nigeria’s south-west held election re-runs on 25 April, but results have been delayed.

Mrs Adebayo claimed that attempts were being made to rig the election, which has been marred by outbreaks of political violence and intimidation. The election for state governor had to be re-run after a tribunal ruled some parts of the state had not followed the rules in the 2007 poll.

A resident electoral officer is the only person allowed to announce the results of an election. Police had said she must make an official report to them about her allegations or be “declared wanted”. Violence has delayed counting in several areas and one local government area has not yet voted.

Local media reported the opposition gubernatorial candidate Kayode Fayemi of the Action Congress was leading the ruling People’s Democratic Party candidate Segun Oni after counting had begun. The Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) said the race was “neck and neck”.

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ZIMBABWE’S FINANCE MINISTER CONFIRMS $400M LOAN FROM AFRICAN STATES

Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti confirmed on Thursday the country was receiving $400 million in credit lines from African states to revive its ailing industries. The funds will be made available to “critical” industries including food processing and fertiliser companies, he told Reuters during a visit to London.

“COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) has provided a line of credit and so have Botswana and South Africa and that brings the line of credit to $400 million,” Biti said. “Botswana is giving us $70 million and South Africa is giving us $50 million and COMESA is giving us the bulk of the amount.”

State media reported on Wednesday that the southern African country had secured $400 million in credit lines to help the local economy recover from years of economic contraction and hyper-inflation. A unity government formed by rivals President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has appealed for billions of dollars from the West.

Asked when Zimbabwe was expecting aid from Western governments, Biti said it would come “soon”. Western donors, who are expected to provide the bulk of funding for Zimbabwe’s economic recovery, have demanded broad economic and political reforms, including ending a new wave of farm invasions targeting the few remaining white farmers.

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SUDAN TO REVIEW CHAD PEACE IN QATAR

Sudan plans to review its past peace agreements with Chad in an attempt to find a lasting deal in reconciliation talks that are taking place in Qatar on Thursday, a senior Sudanese official said. Oil-producing states Chad and Sudan resumed shaky diplomatic ties last November after cutting them in May. Khartoum had accused Chadian President Idriss Deby of involvement in an attack on the Sudanese capital by Darfur rebels on May 11, 2008.

Both countries have long accused each other of supporting insurgent groups and rebel attacks inside their territories. The talks, which started on Wednesday in Doha under Qatari and Libyan sponsorship, will review the positive and negative aspects of past agreements to arrive at a lasting solution, Sudanese Foreign Ministry undersecretary Mutrif Siddig told Qatar’s state news agency late on Wednesday.

“We will work with our brethren in Chad to find lasting peaceful solutions for Chad’s issues, so that they do not have adverse reflections on Sudan,” the Qatar News Agency quoted Siddig as saying. The porous border between Sudan and Chad has contributed to several conflicts, including the civil war in Sudan’s Darfur region, which has killed around 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million others since it erupted in 2003, international experts say.

Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani said the meeting that Doha is hosting seeks to help improve ties between the two African nations to bring stability to the region. Qatar is ramping up its role as a peace-broker in the Middle East and North Africa by sponsoring peace talks between warring factions in Sudan, Yemen and Lebanon and hosting meetings between Palestinian and Israeli officials.

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DRC PLANE CRASH, CREW FATE UNCLEAR

A Boeing 737 with two crew members on board crashed on Wednesday in Democratic Republic of Congo about 200 km (125 miles) from Kinshasa, a government official said. Richard Ndambu, governor of Bandundu province, said the aircraft had been flying from Central African Republic to Zimbabwe and crashed after a stopover in Congo Republic.

“It was a 737 from Central African Republic that took off this morning from Bangui and made a stopover in Brazzaville and was then heading for Harare for a check,” he told Reuters. “We don’t yet know the name of the company. That is what we have learned from the control tower in Brazzaville.” Godefroid Pindi, head of local radio in the town of Kenge, said the plane had gone down between Kenge and Nzasi in Bandundu province and that villagers had reported a large cloud of smoke. It was not known whether the crew survived the crash.

“There were two people on board, the crew. Their documents were found at the site. There were no passengers,” Ndambu said. According to the International Air Transport Association, Africa’s air accident rate is six times worse than the rest of the world. An aid plane crashed into a mountain eastern Congo in September killing 17 people and a Congolese airliner crashed into a market district in the eastern city of Goma last April killing at least 40 people, mostly on the ground.

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TWO FOREIGN AID WORKERS FREED IN DARFUR

Two foreign aid workers kidnapped by gunmen in Sudan’s Darfur region about three weeks ago have been freed. French national Claire Dubois and Canadian Stephanie Jodoin were working for the French aid agency, Aide Medicale Internationale. They were seized on 4 April from their office near the south Darfur state capital Nyala.

One of the kidnappers told Reuters news agency they released the hostages because their health was deteriorating. “The Sudanese government confirms their release. They are in good health, in good shape,” Ali Yussef, a protocol official at Sudan’s foreign ministry, told AFP news agency.

The kidnappers, calling themselves Freedom Eagles of Africa, had earlier demanded the retrial of six French citizens, pardoned a year ago for trying to abduct children from neighbouring Chad. The six, who worked for Paris-based charity, Zoe’s Ark, had initially been sentenced to eight years in prison in Chad, but were later moved to France.

It was the second kidnapping of Western humanitarian workers in Darfur since Sudan expelled 13 foreign aid groups in March this year after a war crimes arrest warrant was issued for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Four staff with Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) were kidnapped at gunpoint from their Darfur home on 11 March. They were freed four days later.

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EX-UN SCRIBE HAILS KENYAN SPEAKER

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan praised Kenya’s speaker of parliament on Wednesday for telling leaders of the fractious coalition government to end their feuding and get back to work. The administration was formed last year to solve post-election violence that displaced hundreds of thousands of people and hit trade and economic growth across the region.

But to the growing dismay of Kenyans and foreign investors, many of its senior members have squabbled ever since. Annan, who led the talks that created the coalition, said he and other former mediators had followed with concern the deadlock over who would be the official leader of government business in parliament — as well as a separate debate over who would chair an influential parliament committee.

Parliament Speaker Kenneth Marende had been expected to rule on both issues on Tuesday.But instead he threw the decision back to the coalition parties, saying he expected they would resolve the issues “in good faith through consultation and willingness to compromise”.

Analysts said he was effectively forcing President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga, the former opposition leader, back to the negotiating table to hammer out the details of their power-sharing agreement. Annan and his former mediation team, Tanzanian ex-president Benjamin Mkapa and Graca Machel, said it was a good move.

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