Free Republic

Geneva (AFP) - Many of the young girls Boko Haram sends out as suicide bombers in Nigeria and neighbouring countries are probably unaware that they will be blown up, a UN expert said Tuesday. Boko Haram jihadists have in recent months increasingly used young women and girls as suicide bombers in northeast Nigeria, northern Cameroon, Chad and Niger, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Leila Zerrougui, the UN secretary-general's special representative on children and armed conflict, suggested Tuesday that especially the children used in this way were in many cases not aware of what they were about to do....

The Cameroon army claimed Wednesday to have dealt a major blow to Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamists, killing around 100 fighters and freeing 900 hostages in a three-day operation last week. ... The sweep enabled troops "to release almost 900 hostages, seize large supplies of arms and munitions as well as black-and-white Islamic State flags", the statement added, without providing details on the identities of those freed. Boko Haram swore allegiance to IS in March 2015. The minister attributed the success of the raid to cooperation between Cameroon security forces, a new multinational force being set up to fight Boko Haram...

Radison Blu hotel under attack by jihadists armed with AK-47s and hand grenades in Malian capital of Bamako Up to 10 gunmen have taken dozens of hostages inside the Radisson hotel while 80 people have escaped unharmed Gunmen spoke in English and tested hostages' knowledge of the Koran before allowing Muslim hostages to leave Pentagon confirms that all 22 American nationals were rescued and unhurt following the hotel crisis US Special Forces led elite operation to clear the building one floor at a time amid deadly hostage crisis At least 27 people have been killed including a Belgian diplomat and...

When a rubber dinghy carrying around 100 African refugees across the Mediterranean began to sink, a Nigerian Christian prayed for his life in an innocent act that would end in the deaths of 12 fellow migrants. One of the Muslims on board the rickety craft ordered him to stop, saying: 'Here, we only pray to Allah.' When he refused, a violent fight ensued and 12 Christians drowned when they were thrown overboard by the Muslim refugees. The tragic news comes amid reports that an unprecedented 10,000 refugees fleeing war and persecution in Africa have been rescued by Italian ships in...

Agence France-Presse in Kano Wednesday 18 November 2015 15.37 EST Last modified on Thursday 19 November 2015 04.02 EST Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Shares 4,576 Save for later At least 15 people have been killed after two female suicide bombers, one said to be aged as young as 11, blew themselves up at a busy mobile phone market in north-east Nigeria, a day after more than 30 were killed in a bomb blast. Two explosions ripped through the Farm Centre market in northern Nigeria’s biggest city, Kano, shortly after 4pm on Wednesday. One of the...

Two bomb attacks in 24 hours -- one of them involving an 11-year-old female suicide bomber -- killed dozens of people and wounded more than 120 others in the Nigerian cities of Yola and Kano, authorities said. At least 31 people were killed and 72 others injured in a bomb blast Tuesday evening in the northeastern city of Yola, Aliyu Maikano, a local Red Cross official, said. -excerpt- The two bombers, who Katsina said were females ages 11 and 18, blew themselves up at about 4 p.m. local time, during the peak of trading, he said. A minivan carrying four...

The devastating toll of terror attacks is laid bare today with a shocking study revealing the number of people slaughtered worldwide has risen by 80 per cent in a year. A total of 32,658 people were killed by terrorists around the world in 2014 - an 80 per cent increase on the previous year, according to the Global Terrorism Index. Researchers said that while Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria bore the brunt of deaths last year, the attacks in Paris on Friday mark a 'watershed within Europe'.

You can’t make this sh*t up. Hillary Clinton lists the reasons why thousands of people are fleeing Syria:”Because of terrible governance, because of corruption, because of conflict, because of climate change.” On Wednesday, a Clinton aide confirmed that the candidate meant what she said on the connections between climate change and refugee crises. “As experts have noted,” the aide said, “climate change is one of the factors that can contribute to displacement and exacerbate refugee situations.” Hillary Clinton, echoing the Marxist agitator Obama who has also said: “Understand, climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world,...

While most of the press has focused on Obama's military machinations in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, the administration has also been quietly expanding its secret wars and assassination programs across Africa. From training the militaries of various unsavory regimes and boosting the military capabilities of the so-called African Union, to establishing drone bases to facilitate espionage and extrajudicial killings, the White House is literally treating the continent as a vast battlefield in need of perpetual U.S. "intervention." And the consequences have been deadly.

The number of Africans trapped in poverty has surged by around 100 million over the past quarter century, the World Bank said on Friday, despite years of economic growth and multi-million dollar aid programs. The report's figures, described as "staggering" by the bank's Africa head Makhtar Diop, showed widespread malnutrition, and rising violence against civilians, particularly in central regions and the Horn of Africa. "It is projected that the world's extreme poor will be increasingly concentrated in Africa," Diop added in a foreword. A surge in population meant the proportion of Africans in poverty had actually fallen since 1990, but...

The U.K. and U.S. have thrown their muscle behind Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s bid to recover billions of dollars he says his compatriots embezzled and stashed abroad. At stake is whether courtrooms thousands of miles from Africa can help the continent track down stolen money, seize it, try the culprits and return the funds in timely fashion.

Pope Francis’s speech to the UN called for a coordinated international response to the plight of Christians in the Middle East and Africa: “Christians, together with other cultural or ethnic groups,… have been forced to witness the destruction of their places of worship, their cultural and religious heritage, their houses and property, and have faced the alternative either of fleeing or of paying for their adhesion to good and to peace by their own lives, or by enslavement. “There are individual persons, our brothers and sisters, men and women, young and old, boys and girls who weep, suffer and die....

Qaddafi's latest gambit: Convince the European public that they really want him to stick around, with all the stability that entails. "There are millions of blacks who could come to the Mediterranean to cross to France and Italy, and Libya plays a role in security in the Mediterranean."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Sunday the Middle East would be more stable if Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were still in power in Libya and Iraq, saying it's "not even a contest". Trump mentioned the countries in comparison to current efforts to drive Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of power. "You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there, it's a mess," Trump said on NBC. "If you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there, it's a mess. It's going to be...

When Venezuelan Oil Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso resigned in 1963, he blasted the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, at the time torn by internal rivalries, for failing to produce any benefits for his country. Half a century later, OPEC is still split and Venezuela is again unhappy, this time at the unwillingness of the organization’s top producer, Saudi Arabia, to rescue oil prices from a six-year low that’s dragging the battered Venezuelan economy into an even deeper crisis. On Sept. 10, Venezuela’s oil minister, Eulogio del Pino, tweeted appeals for OPEC and non-OPEC countries “to have a discussion on...

In 2005 then-Governor of Arizona Janet Napolitano famously said that building a wall on the southern border of the United States to stem the flow of illegal immigration would be ineffective. “You show me a 50-foot wall and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border. That’s the way the border works,” she argued. That deep seeded focus on domestic security was apparently enough for President Obama to eventually appoint her as head of the Department of Homeland Security, overseeing the safety of the American people. An actual wall designed to keep unknown individuals and potential terrorists out of...

A humanitarian crisis threatens the future of Western institutions. ... According to the U.N. refugee agency, 53% of the migrants are from Syria, 14% from Afghanistan, 7% from Eritrea, and 3% each from Pakistan, Nigeria, Iraq and Somalia. Seventy-two percent are men, only 13% women and 15% children.

Vanguard reports that the Ipodo area of Ikeja is notorious for criminal activities, adding that the Inspector has also been accused of aiding and abetting criminals.Reports just in says that an Inspector in the Nigerian Police, has lost an AK-47 rifle and 30 rounds of ammunition assigned to him. His name was not revealed for security reasons. Vanguard Newspapers reports that his team mates alleged that he went to sleep with a commercial sex worker, in the Ipodo area of Ikeja, where he got drunk, and left the gun in the vehicle. Vanguard reports that the Ipodo area of...

Americans do well with moderation. It is in our national DNA. It is also a by-product of the freedom of expression and allowing different perspectives in the public forum. In foreign policy, non-interventionism is the moderate stance, and it has served Americans well in her four hundred or so years. As British subjects, American colonists were compelled to fight for the British crown, until they felt compelled to defend themselves against the king’s army. After centuries of European conflicts dragging Americans into war, national independence yielded a non-interventionist foreign policy for the infant nation. George Washington advised in his farewell...

Up to 150 people drowned in a river or were shot dead fleeing Boko Haram gunmen who raided a remote village in Nigeria's northeastern Yobe state, residents said on Tuesday.Dozens of militants arrived on motorcycles and in a car on Thursday last week and sprayed automatic gunfire, scattering terrified inhabitants of Kukuwa-Gari."They opened fire instantly, which forced residents to flee. They shot a number of people. Unfortunately many residents who tried to flee plunged into the river which is full from the rain. Many drowned," Modu Balumi, a resident of the village, told AFP."By our latest toll we have 150...