Africa

At least 33 civilians were killed in an overnight raid on Cantine in North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, that authorities and civil society groups blamed on the Islamic State-linked Allied Democratic Forces — an attack that set a health post ablaze and forced 180 hospital patients, including a confirmed Ebola case, to flee.

The Algerian War (1954–1962), explained: the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched its uprising on 1 November 1954 against a French Algeria that Paris insisted was not a colony but France itself — three departments, legally integral to the Republic since 1848, home to about a million European settlers. France sent an army that peaked at some 470,000–500,000 troops, drafted about two million conscripts over the war, dismantled the FLN's Algiers network in the Battle of Algiers and, under the Challe Plan of 1959, regained military control of most of the country — and still lost. The war destroyed the Fourth Republic, brought Charles de Gaulle to power, and ended with the Évian Accords of 18 March 1962 and a referendum in which some six million Algerians voted for independence and only about 16,000 against. How many Algerians died is still disputed: historians' estimates put total deaths at 400,000–700,000, Alistair Horne put Algerian casualties at around one million, and the FLN and the Algerian government have claimed 1.5 million.

Sudan drone strikes on energy and fuel infrastructure have stranded hundreds of aid trucks, stopped dialysis treatment for 25 people at a hospital outside Khartoum and left fuel queues kilometres long in the capital, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Denise Brown told UN News, describing an intense pattern of attacks over the past couple of weeks that appears to target civilian infrastructure systematically.

Sudan said late Sunday it had filed complaints against Ethiopia with the UN Security Council and the African Union's Peace and Security Council, after a Sudanese report alleged 70 RSF drone attacks launched from Ethiopian territory since February — attacks Khartoum says killed or wounded 484 civilians — an allegation Ethiopia has denied.

Ethiopia drone strikes killed at least 25 civilians in two days this week, witnesses and a medical source told AFP: repeated strikes on a displacement camp in Amhara, and a second strike in Rama, Tigray, on people collecting grain spilled from a lorry hit the night before. Addis Standard's own reporting put the Rama toll at 12 — a resident told AFP 13 — and the camp toll at 16, and the Ethiopian army did not respond to requests for comment.

Senior Rapid Support Forces commander Siddiq Ander has defected from Sudan's paramilitary group, Al Jazeera reported on Friday, accusing relatives of RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, of tightly controlling the group's finances, weapons, troop movements and military promotions. Ander's accusations are published here as his own claims, in his own words; his exit is the latest in a string of senior RSF defections this year, several of them made alongside hundreds of fighters.

A series of drone strikes hit the Jari 2 camp for displaced civilians near Hayk in Ethiopia's Amhara region on Friday, killing at least 15 people — five of them children — according to rescue sources cited by Reuters, while Addis Standard put the toll at 16 killed from its own reporting among camp residents. Who carried out the strikes is not known, and Ethiopia's government had not commented.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced in Moscow on Wednesday that Ethiopia has taken delivery of 12 Russian-made Su-35 fighter jets — a year ahead of schedule, he said — with four S-400 air defence batteries to follow, in a milestone for an air force that has relied on Russian aircraft since the 1990s. The deal, experts told Al Jazeera, strengthens Moscow's foothold in the Horn of Africa while Addis Ababa fights a renewed war in Tigray and accuses Eritrea of backing the rebels.

Twenty-seven Ugandans enlisted to fight for Russia's army in Ukraine have been killed or are presumed dead, a letter from Uganda's embassy in Moscow to its foreign ministry showed on Thursday: 11 confirmed dead, and 16 whose bodies could not be located anywhere, including among prisoners of war. The letter, whose authenticity a Ugandan foreign ministry official confirmed, follows a UN-backed inquiry's finding this week that Russia recruited men from 29 countries into its armed forces through deception or coercion — Uganda among them.

Up to 50,000 people have crossed from Ethiopia into Kenya since last Thursday to escape clashes between Oromia and Somali regional forces around the divided border town of Moyale, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday, up from 36,000 a day earlier. Many of those fleeing are women and children, food is the most urgent need, and UNHCR has deployed an emergency team to Moyale — while the figure remains an estimate from local authorities, still subject to verification as people continue to arrive.

A drone strike on a busy market in Nyala, the capital of Sudan's South Darfur, at about 8 p.m. on Monday killed more than 100 people and injured 113, Emergency Lawyers, a Sudanese rights group tracking violence in the war, said in a statement on Tuesday, blaming the Sudanese military. The toll is not reconciled: the MSF-supported Nyala Teaching Hospital received 36 bodies — 21 of them in civilian clothing — and saw more than 150 wounded, while a medic told AFP 21 people were killed and more than 40 injured. No Sudanese Armed Forces response appears in the reporting opened.

At least 60 people were killed in two attacks in Ethiopia's conflict-hit Oromiya region in the past week — 14 in Merti district on October 20 and 46 in Sherka district on October 24 — the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church's Holy Synod said in a statement issued on Monday, Reuters reported. Residents and church officials in Sherka described a dawn attack on villages and a mass burial at a church in Chole. The regional government and a source linked to a rebel alliance traded blame; neither claim was independently verified.

The United Kingdom on Monday, October 26, 2026 sanctioned 15 senior commanders from both the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for suspected atrocities, including conflict-related sexual violence, during and after the fall of El Fasher, and announced £5 million for survivors of sexual violence and £10 million in humanitarian funding. The announcement, made one year after El Fasher fell following an eighteen-month siege, follows UK-funded Centre for Information Resilience reporting that the siege tactics used there — systematic starvation, sexual violence, drone attacks on civilian infrastructure and obstruction of aid — are still being deployed across Sudan by both sides.

One year after the Rapid Support Forces captured El Fasher, fewer than 70,000 people remain in a city whose pre-war population was more than one million, Amnesty International said in new testimony from 25 civilians interviewed in August and September 2026. A BBC investigation documented at least 43 attacks on hospitals and health sites between May 2024 and October 2025, and 55 medical workers killed.

Sudan's famine risk is growing as an El Niño-driven drought — the driest peak rainy season in more than three decades — compounds more than three years of civil war, the UN-backed IPC hunger monitor warned on October 12. Rainfall from July to September was the lowest since 1984 in North Darfur, the IPC said 5.1 million people already faced severe hunger in June, and the World Food Programme forecasts 350,000 more people in severe hunger by the end of 2026 and 1.2 million more by August 2027, Reuters reported after interviewing farmers, traders and aid officials across the country.

The Second Boer War, explained: from 11 October 1899 to 31 May 1902 Britain fought the South African Republic and the Orange Free State over supremacy in southern Africa and control of the Witwatersrand goldfields. Britain won with nearly 500,000 troops against some 88,000 Boers, at a cost of more than £200 million and around 75,000 lives — most of them civilians who died of disease in concentration camps.

The death toll from Monday's drone strike on Amiet market in the disputed Abyei region has risen to at least 153, the region's caretaker information minister told the Associated Press and Reuters on Tuesday — more than double the 73 he reported earlier. The figures remain unreconciled: AFP, citing Abyei authorities, reported 53 killed, and the United Nations said at least 28 civilians were killed at the market and in Todach, with many people unaccounted for. A senior Sudanese military officer told the AP the army had struck fuel tankers he said were bound for the RSF; the AP could not verify his account.

Drone strikes in Sudan's West Kordofan state on Sunday evening killed 150 people — 145 of them when a truck carrying mourners to a funeral was hit at Al-Dabab — sources told the Sudan War Observatory, the BBC reported on Tuesday, a toll nearly double the count reported for the same town a day earlier. Together with the 73 killed at Abyei's Amiet market on Monday, the reported deaths pass 200. The BBC's figures conflict in both toll and detail with the AFP-based reporting published on Monday, and neither count has been independently verified.

At least 73 people were killed and 19 wounded when drones struck Amiet market in the disputed Abyei region on Monday, Abyei's caretaker information minister told Reuters on Tuesday, accusing Sudan's army of the attack. The minister provided no evidence for the accusation, no independent verification of the death toll was available, and Médecins Sans Frontières said it was treating more than 20 wounded people at a nearby hospital.

A wave of drone strikes across Sudan has killed more than 160 people since Friday, according to medics and rights groups reporting on Monday — 80 of them in a single Sunday-evening strike on a transport hub near a market in Al-Dibab, West Kordofan, and three children in a Monday strike on a house near Khartoum's airport. The United Nations condemned the attacks on Monday, saying drones are killing civilians, including children, and disrupting essential services.

Mali's armed forces and their Russian Africa Corps backers carried out 47 drone strikes that killed 94 civilians between April and August, ACLED data cited by Human Rights Watch shows — more than double the strikes and deaths of a year earlier. HRW's Monday report documented 'apparent indiscriminate' strikes including a cattle market in Bandiagara region that killed six men and a health centre in Kidal region. Mali's army did not respond; Mali has previously denied killing civilians.

Drones caused roughly 1,100 of the 1,400 civilian deaths recorded in Sudan in the first half of 2026, UN figures presented to the Security Council showed, as the UN's political chief told ambassadors on Friday that neither the army nor the RSF is moving toward dialogue and both believe they can gain on the battlefield. Twenty million people face acute hunger, a drone strike near the Ethiopian border killed 41 displaced people on October 10, and the Council's arms embargo remains confined to Darfur.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has named a caretaker government to stabilise the northern Tigray region and prepare for an election within six months, his office said, weeks after federal forces and allied militia retook the regional capital Mekelle from the TPLF-led rebel alliance. The temporary administration is also tasked with repairing damaged infrastructure and helping displaced people return home, in a region where some 750,000 people were still displaced as of February.

Kenya fuel prices rose sharply for the October 15 to November 14 period after the energy regulator cited higher import costs linked to the conflict in the Middle East: in Nairobi, petrol rose about 6% to 226.96 shillings a litre, diesel rose about 4.5% to 227.76 shillings, and kerosene jumped to 219.87 shillings, Reuters reported. Kenya relies on the Middle East for nearly all of its fuel and imports all of it in refined form.

Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has launched a new political-military coalition, the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN), headed by Kabila with M23 rebel leaders as deputies, replacing the AFC-M23 alliance in eastern Congo, Reuters and Al Jazeera reported. A day later the United States urged Rwanda at the Security Council to withdraw its troops from Congo and cease all support to M23.

Ethiopian government troops advanced on Tuesday to Zalambessa, a town of about 15,000 on the border with Eritrea that Tigrayan rebels previously controlled, six sources told Reuters. Witnesses and a conflict monitor said Eritrean troops had crossed into the town last week in support of the rebels — an incursion Eritrea denies. Both countries have written to the UN Security Council, and its members were due to meet behind closed doors on Tuesday.

The risk of famine is growing across Sudan's Greater Darfur and Greater Kordofan as war, displacement and an El Niño drought combine, the UN-backed IPC hunger monitor warned on Monday. Thirteen of 17 nutrition surveys in Greater Darfur since January found critical malnutrition, more than 300,000 people have fled Greater Kordofan since October 2025, and less than half of Sudan's humanitarian appeal was funded as of October 8.

A drone strike on Friday in Sudan's southeastern Blue Nile state killed at least 30 displaced people — 26 women and four children — the provincial governor told Al Jazeera, blaming the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. A rights group put the toll at 41, as the United Nations condemned the attack on a displacement camp near the Ethiopian border.

Sudan's civil war, which erupted in Khartoum in April 2023, pits the Sudanese Armed Forces against the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary. Three and a half years on, the war has displaced 14 million people, split the country east to west, and turned the Kordofan region into its central battleground — while the army chief vows to retake 'every inch' of territory.

The UN World Food Programme condemned an aerial attack that killed a driver of two clearly marked aid trucks in Sudan's South Kordofan, calling for a prompt investigation. The incident lands as a senior U.S. envoy met Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Egypt — while Burhan publicly vows to keep fighting the RSF.

The Azawad Liberation Front said on Tuesday it was leaving the strategic northern town of Kidal — which it seized with al-Qaeda-linked fighters in April — in response to airstrikes by Mali's military backed by Russian fighters.

Overnight into Monday, October 5, 2026, airstrikes and artillery fire struck northern Tigray, aid sources told Reuters — killing at least 17 people around Adwa and Sheraro, northwest of the capital Mekelle, which federal forces seized over the weekend. The toll has not been independently verified.

Fighting has returned to Ethiopia's Tigray region in 2026 after the 2022 Pretoria peace deal broke down: a seven-group rebel alliance attacked on September 23, Ethiopian forces retook the capital Mekelle on October 4, and Addis Ababa has severed ties with Eritrea. Analysts warn the conflict could spread across the Horn of Africa.

Sudan's army says it captured the strategic town of al-Mazroub in North Kordofan on Friday and dealt a 'knockout blow' to the RSF and SPLM-N in Blue Nile state on Saturday. The RSF still controls almost all of Darfur, and the humanitarian catastrophe — 19.5 million facing acute hunger — is deepening regardless of who holds the map.

Ethiopian government forces and allied militias regained control of Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region, three sources told Reuters on Sunday — a major blow the TPLF-led opposition alliance publicly acknowledged in a statement announcing its retreat.

The Sudan Doctors Network said a drone strike attributed to the RSF killed at least 24 people, including eight children, when a vehicle carrying displaced families was hit near Rahad in North Kordofan on Saturday — a day after a separate drone attack on a WFP aid convoy killed one and wounded several, according to the UN's humanitarian coordinator in Sudan.

The pro-government Tigray Peace Forces militia said on Friday it had recaptured Alula Aba Nega Airport in Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia's Tigray region, and was clearing the city. Reuters said it could not immediately verify the claim, and the TPLF could not be reached for comment.

The Sudanese Armed Forces announced on October 2 that they had taken al-Mazroub, the administrative capital of West Bara Locality, in their monthslong North Kordofan offensive. Geolocated video reviewed by the Sudan War Monitor confirms army and allied units inside the town; the RSF has not publicly responded.

Ethiopian government forces and allied militiamen closed to within striking distance of the Tigray regional capital Mekelle on Friday, residents and a diplomat told Reuters, in the worst escalation since the 2020–2022 civil war. TPLF chairperson Debretsion Gebremichael acknowledged his forces had lost ground and threatened a counter-attack.

Ethiopia closed its embassy in Asmara and expelled 10 Eritrean diplomats on Thursday; Eritrea responded by severing all diplomatic ties. The rupture — the biggest Horn-of-Africa escalation since the 2020–2022 war — came hours after overnight explosions were heard in Addis Ababa, which an opposition-linked source claimed were drone strikes, a claim Reuters could not independently verify.

South Sudan conflict explained: the world's youngest country is sliding back toward civil war as President Salva Kiir prepares December 22 elections — the first since independence — while his rival Riek Machar sits under house arrest on trial for treason. A guide to the Kiir–Machar rivalry, the collapsed 2018 peace deal, and where the crisis stands.

More than 120 armed groups operate in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The M23 rebellion — 30,000 to 40,000 fighters strong, widely reported to be backed by Rwanda — is the most powerful of them. Peace deals signed in late 2025 have not stopped the fighting. Here is the conflict, explained.

The Sudanese army chief refused Washington's reported condition — a 90-day ceasefire in exchange for a UN visa — and told a Khartoum rally his goal is to 'eliminate this militia, no matter the cost.'

At least 30 men have been executed since August 23 in eastern Libya after what Amnesty calls 'grossly unfair, torture-tainted' secret military trials — ending a 15-year de facto moratorium, with 50 more at imminent risk.

More than three years into Sudan's civil war, nearly 20 million people face acute hunger, 14 million are displaced, and aid funding is running dry. Here is the anatomy of the Sudan humanitarian crisis.

Al-Shabaab has retaken ground across southern and central Somalia just as Washington moves to wind down the UN logistics keeping the African Union mission alive. Here is the state of the fight — and what could replace nearly two decades of multilateral security.

More than 50 members of Niger's security forces were killed in two attacks in the west of the country last week, sources told Reuters — the latest blow to a junta that seized power in 2023 and is losing ground to jihadist groups. The Islamic State Sahel Province has claimed responsibility.

Fifteen years after Gaddafi's fall, Libya remains split between rival governments in Tripoli and the east — and its oil wealth keeps the war frozen rather than finished. Here is how the Libya frozen conflict works.

The Fano insurgency began in April 2023 when a militia that fought beside Ethiopia's army turned its guns on the government. Now Fano has allied with its old enemy the TPLF, and the Amhara conflict is pushing the country toward renewed civil war. Here is what is happening and why.

Kinshasa and the M23 rebels have signed a Doha framework deal and agreed a prisoner exchange, yet both sides keep trading ceasefire-violation claims in North and South Kivu. This M23 ceasefire update tracks what the deals say — and why fighting persists.

Drone attacks attributed to the RSF have shut down hospitals, water stations and power in El Obeid — while military sources report an unprecedented buildup of fighters from Darfur and West Kordofan ahead of a possible ground offensive.

Al-Qaeda's Sahel branch, JNIM, has killed hundreds of soldiers, strangled Mali's capital with a fuel blockade, and pushed three military juntas into a Russian-backed alliance. Here is how the Sahel conflict works — and why it matters.

The Rapid Support Forces have stepped up drone strikes on government-held towns in North Kordofan — including a courtroom and a college — as fears grow that El Obeid could face the fate of El Fasher.