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by Annie THOMAS and Lucien KAHOZI Agence France-Presse MANONO, DR Congo (AFP) – Near the rusting carcass of a smelter, barefoot men and women scratch at the ground in the quest for cassiterite — the tin oxide ore that generations ago gave the town of Manono a brief taste of the good life. The diggers carry the sandy earth to the Lukushi River where women wash the grit in metal bowls, hoping to find some […]
KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) – Environmental group Greenpeace on Tuesday said the Democratic Republic of Congo has failed to respect a multi-million-dollar agreement signed with Britain last year to finance protecting its ecologically vital forests. The DRC and Britain approved funds worth $500 million as part of the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) two months ago in Glasgow, which hosted the COP26 climate change conference. Greenpeace said Congo’s environment ministry failed to publish before the […]
by Marion DOUET Agence France-Presse LAKE KIVU, Rwanda (AFP) – The engineers aboard the floating power station on Lake Kivu could only watch nervously as the volcano in the distance erupted violently, sending tremors rumbling through the water beneath them. It was not the lava shooting from Mount Nyiragongo last May that spooked them, but the enormous concentrations of potentially explosive gases within Kivu, one of Africa’s great Rift lakes lying between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic […]
KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) – Uganda launched air strikes and artillery attacks targeting the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebel group in eastern DR Congo on Tuesday, in an operation agreed with Congolese forces, both sides said. “As announced, targeted and concerted action with the Ugandan army started today with air strikes and artillery fire from Uganda against positions of the terrorist ADF in the DRC,” Congolese government spokesman and Communications Minister Patrick Muyaya wrote on […]
GOMA, DR Congo (AFP) – The reappearance of a lava lake in the crater of the Nyiragongo volcano in eastern DR Congo is a good sign, experts said Sunday, four months after a major eruption killed 32 people. Nyiragongo’s eruption on May 22-23 spewed out lava that buried homes in its wake, stopping just short of the northern outskirts of Goma, a city of some 600,000 people. Celestin Kasereka Mahinda, the scientific director of the […]
GOMA, DR Congo (AFP) — A world-famous gorilla reserve in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo denounced on Wednesday the “illegal sale” of land within its territory. Land in at least four areas of the Virunga National Park have been sold off, according to the reserve’s director. “The perpetrators falsely claim that the Congolese justice system has given them the land even though the current law prohibits all such practices,” said Emmanuel de Merode in a statement […]
by Samir TOUNSI Agence France-Presse KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) — Overlooking Kinshasa from the seclusion of a presidential garden, the statue of Belgian King Leopold II stares over the Congo River far from the protests and rage targetting colonial figures elsewhere. The monument to the Belgian monarch, who made the Congo his personal fiefdom, stands next to his successor, Albert I, and a statue of British explorer Henry Stanley who founded the city that would become […]
KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) — A second death from Ebola has been recorded in eastern DR Congo in the final days before a deadline, now scrapped, in which health authorities hoped to declare an end to a 20-month epidemic. Hopes had been high that the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday would officially bring the curtain down on the country’s 10th known outbreak of the notorious hemorrhagic fever. But on Friday, a 26-year-old man was […]
More than 1,000 people have now died of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, authorities said, as aid workers warned that the highly contagious virus combined with insecurity in the restive region was creating a “deeply worrying situation”. The current outbreak is the second deadliest on record, after an epidemic killed more than 11,300 people in West Africa in 2014-2016. Efforts to roll back the outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever have been hampered by […]
by Samir Tounsi Agence France Presse KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) — At least 60 people died and scores suffered serious burns on Saturday after an oil tanker collided with a vehicle on an arterial highway in the west of DR Congo. The accident occurred on a highway linking the capital Kinshasa to the country’s sole seaport at Matadi on the Atlantic Ocean. “We have counted 53 charred bodies,” said Florian, a witness, speaking at […]
BENI, DR Congo (AFP) – The Ebola outbreak in eastern DR Congo has claimed 55 lives since the start of the month, the authorities said Monday, as the government announced free treatment against the disease for the next three months. The health ministry’s latest bulletin said that the death toll had been increased following five new victims in Mabalako-Mangina, close to Beni, the epicenter of the outbreak in the North Kivu province. In all, “96 […]
KINSHASA, DR Congo (AFP) – An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo is just weeks away from being defeated, after claiming 29 lives, the country’s health minister said Thursday. The “countdown” has begun, Oly Ilunga, said, noting that “all those in contact with the last confirmed cases of Ebola have finished their 21-day surveillance period without showing signs of contamination.” He said the outbreak, the ninth in the former Belgian […]
