Friday, February 26, 2021

Six In The Morning Friday 26 February 2021

 Hundreds died in Axum massacre during Tigray war, says Amnesty

Group says soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed civilians in northern Ethiopian city

 Africa correspondent

Hundreds of unarmed civilians were massacred in less than 48 hours by Eritrean troops during the war in the restive northern Ethiopian province of Tigray last year, Amnesty International has said.

The soldiers systematically killed hundreds of civilians in the northern city of Axum, opening fire in the streets and conducting house-to-house raids in a massacre that may amount to a crime against humanity, it said in a report.

Investigators from Amnesty International spoke to survivors and witnesses who described extrajudicial executions, indiscriminate shelling and widespread looting after Ethiopian and Eritrean troops led an offensive to take control of the city during the conflict with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) in mid-November.


‘Neo-Nazi’ jailed for threatening to bomb NHS hospital at height of pandemic

Emil Apreda also threatened to bomb Black Lives Matter protesters and MPs if £10m not paid

Lizzie Dearden@lizziedearden

A man has been jailed for threatening to bomb an NHS hospital at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Emil Apreda, a 33-year-old Italian man living in Berlin, threatened to place an explosive device in an unspecified English hospital unless he was paid £10m in Bitcoin.

His message purported to be from the neo-Nazi group Combat 18, but investigators said he used it as a “front for his extortion” and that he did not have access to a bomb.


Nigeria: Hundreds of schoolgirls feared abducted in raid

Gunmen have abducted an unknown number of children in an attack on a boarding school. It's the second time in a week that kidnappers have targeted a school in the West African country.

An armed gang has abducted an unknown number of children in an attack on a boarding school in northwestern Nigeria, a state government spokesman said Friday.

The overnight incident — the second mass kidnapping in a week — took place in the town of Jangebe, Zamfara state, at around midnight.

"Unknown gunmen came shooting sporadically and took the girls away," Zamfara state information commissioner Sulaiman Tanau Anka told the Reuters news agency.

India: BJP’s rise in former communist bastion has Muslims worried

India’s West Bengal state – home to 100 million people – has seen rising Hindu nationalism, prompting concerns among Muslims.

 In November 2019, India’s Supreme Court approved the construction of a Hindu temple on disputed land in the northern town of Ayodhya, where there was once a medieval-era mosque.

Around the same time, authorities in the state of West Bengal – about 900km (559 miles) away – fenced a two-acre (0.8-hectare) land parcel in a sleepy neighbourhood of Hooghly district and barred all entry.

Hindu pilgrims argue the site, with remnants of a mosque and a robust minaret, in Pandua town about 100km (62 miles) north of Kolkata, the capital of the West Bengal state, is a Hindu shrine of goddess Shrinkhala Devi.

Shamima Begum, UK teen who joined ISIS, not allowed to return home to fight for citizenship, court rules


Updated 1615 GMT (0015 HKT) February 26, 2021



The UK Supreme Court ruled Friday that "ISIS bride" Shamima Begum cannot return to the United Kingdom to appeal the revocation of her UK citizenship.

The President of the Supreme Court, Lord Robert Reed, said that the UK Court of Appeal made four errors last year when it ruled that Begum should be allowed to return to the UK to carry out her appeal.
Begum was 15 years old when in 2015 she left the UK with two school friends to join ISIS in Syria. She was stripped of her British citizenship by then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid on February 19, 2019 upon being discovered in a northern Syrian refugee camp.

North Korea: Russian diplomats leave by hand-pushed trolley


A group of Russian diplomats and their families made an unusual exit out of North Korea on a hand-pushed rail trolley due to strict Covid measures.

The eight people travelled by train and bus before pushing themselves across the Russian border for about 1km (0.6miles) over train tracks.

North Korea has blocked most passenger transport to limit the virus's spread.



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