Africa News Headlines

The al-Qaida-linked rebels who once controlled nearly all of Somalia's capital and sowed fear throughout the southern part of the country are fleeing their last remaining stronghold because they are outgunned and don't want heavy losses, experts said Sunday.

A Zimbabwean independent monitoring group says it will be impossible to hold free and fair elections in March when President Robert Mugabe wants the polls.

The acting police chief in Kenya's capital says an explosive device set off in a Sunday school class killed one child and seriously wounded three.

Gunmen detonated a bomb Sunday near an Islamic boarding school in northern Nigeria and later exchanged gunfire with security forces, causing unknown casualties in the region's latest round of violence, officials said.

A Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Nigeria landed safely Saturday after the pilot discovered a problem with the aircraft's landing gear, authorities said.

A lawyer says the spokesman of Ivory Coast's former president was arrested Friday, just days after being released on bail after an extradition hearing.

Six people were killed this week in shootouts linked to the Congolese army in Goma, eastern Congo, say local authorities.

Nigerian aviation officials say a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Lagos will need to make an emergency landing because it has problems with its landing gear.

Authorities in Goma say five people were killed this week in shootouts linked to the increase in Congolese army troops here.

Nigerian aviation officials say a Qatar Airways flight will need to make an emergency landing because of a problem with its landing gear.Harold Demuren, head of Nigeria's civil aviation authority said the flight was inbound from Doha. He said firefighting equipment was standing by at Lagos International Airport.

Al-Shabab rebels pulled out of a key port city in southern Somalia, the group said Saturday, a day after Kenyan troops invaded and marched toward the city center and seaside port that long served as the militants' key source of funding, officials said.

Kenyan troops invaded al-Shabab's last stronghold in Somalia on Friday, coming ashore in a predawn beach landing at Kismayo that appeared likely to deprive the Islamist insurgents of their last big money-making enterprise.

One Somali journalist was shot dead by gunmen on Friday while a second journalist was beheaded and his body dumped in the street, officials and residents said, two attacks that bring the number of Somali journalists killed this year to 15.

The oil company Dar Petroleum said Friday it will begin oil production in South Sudan as soon as possible following a security deal signed with Sudan, though getting back to full production remains several months away.

The presidents of Sudan and South Sudan signed economic and security agreements Thursday that will allow a resumption of oil exports from South Sudan. The two countries also reached deals for a demilitarized zone between their borders and a cessation of all hostilities that brought the countries to the brink of all-out …

The empty whiskey bottles and overturned, sand-filled skiffs that litter this once-bustling shoreline are signs that the heyday of Somali piracy may be over. Most of the prostitutes are gone, the luxury cars repossessed. Pirates talk more about catching lobsters than seizing cargo ships.

The leaders of Sudan and South Sudan have reached nine agreements but did not work out the issues surrounding the contested Abyei region or the demarcation of their shared border.

Ten years after one of the worst maritime disasters in history, a handful of survivors gathered in Senegal on Wednesday to pay homage to the victims of the Joola, a Senegalese ferry that sank off the coast of Gambia, killing 1,863 people.

More than $2.1 billion of Guinea's foreign debt is being cancelled in a major boost for the deeply impoverished West African nation whose mineral riches were looted over decades of corrupt dictatorship, officials said Wednesday.

The detention of hundreds of female Nigerian pilgrims heading to Mecca at Saudi Arabia's busiest airport over a rule requiring them to travel with a husband or male relative is threatening to bring a diplomatic dispute between the two nations.

Nigerian officials say 908 Muslim women pilgrims traveling to Mecca face deportation from Saudi Arabia for traveling without male relatives.

Disruptions to South Africa's key mining sector increased as AngloGold Ashanti said Wednesday that strikers have halted all its operations in the country, which provide 32 percent of the multinational's gold production.

More than $2.4 billion of Guinea's foreign debt is being cancelled in a major boost for the deeply impoverished West African nation whose mineral riches were looted over decades of corrupt dictatorship, government officials said Wednesday.