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page 21 SOMALIA Mosque collapses kills 15 in Mogadishu A mosque under refurbishment has collapsed in Somalia, killing at least 15 people and injuring 40. It happened during Friday prayers as the building, in the capital Mogadishu, was packed with worshippers. Hundreds of people are reported to have been inside the building when it collapsed […]

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SOMALIA

Mosque collapses kills 15 in Mogadishu

A mosque under refurbishment has collapsed in Somalia, killing at least 15 people and injuring 40.

It happened during Friday prayers as the building, in the capital Mogadishu, was packed with worshippers.

Hundreds of people are reported to have been inside the building when it collapsed and some are still believed to be trapped under the rubble.

An engineer on the refurbishment project has been arrested on suspicion of negligence, local media report.

Some media outlets report that worshippers were at prayer, while others say more than 100 people were pouring a concrete foundation after prayers when the structure collapsed.

Most of the dead were construction workers.

IRAQ

PM al-Abadi orders arrest of parliament protesters

Iraq’s Prime Minister has ordered the arrest of Shia Muslim activists who stormed parliament in Baghdad on Saturday.

Haider al-Abadi said those who caused damage and attacked police should be brought to justice.

Supporters of cleric Moqtada Sadr broke through barricades of the fortified Green Zone in protest against delays in approving a new cabinet.

A state of emergency was declared in Baghdad after the protests.

Supporters of Mr Sadr want MPs to push through plans to replace ministers with political affiliations with non-partisan technocrats.

Powerful parties in parliament have refused to approve the change for several weeks.

This crisis is one of the country’s worst political crises since the US-led invasion and downfall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

KENYA

Death toll from building collapse in Kenya rises to 16

The death toll from a collapsed six-storey building in Nairobi has risen to 16 from 12, the Kenya Red Cross said on Sunday, but officials declined to be drawn on how many more people might be still under the rubble.

The 198-room building in Huruma in eastern Nairobi collapsed on Friday night after heavy rain and rescue work was continuing on Sunday.

President Uhuru Kenyatta, who visited the site of the collapse, told officials “to undertake an immediate survey of all the houses in the area to find out those which are at risk of collapsing”.

He also ordered the arrest of the owners of the building, which had been condemned by the authorities.

The Kenya Red Cross said in a statement 16 deaths had been confirmed and 135 people injured and treated for their injuries.

GERMANY

German party adopts anti-Islam policy

The German right-wing party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has adopted an explicitly anti-Islam policy.

Delegates at a party conference adopted a ban on minarets, the call to prayer and the full-face veil, saying Islam was “not part of Germany”.

A delegate who called for more local dialogue with Muslim groups was booed.

The start of the conference in Stuttgart on Saturday was disrupted by clashes and hundreds of left-wing protesters were detained.

Meanwhile, hackers published the addresses of more than 2,000 AfD members on a left-wing website.

Formed three years ago, AfD achieved gains in three state elections in March, after campaigning against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to accept a million migrants in 2015.

UKRAINE

Envoy wants ban on Crimean Muslims lifted

By Abdullateef Salau

The Embassy of Ukraine in Nigeria has expressed its resolute protest over the decision of the judicial authority of the occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea, which banned the Mejlis of the Crimean Muslims by declaring it an extremist organisation.

The Ukrainian Ambassador to Nigeria, Dr. Valerii Aleksandruk, in a statement made available to Daily Trust, called for immediate lifting of the ban.

The Supreme Court in the Russia-occupied region had, on April 26, 2016, granted the petition of the pseudo “prosecutor” seeking to ban the Mejlis of the Crimean Muslims, recognising its activities as extremist.

The envoy described the decision as another glaring evidence of the systemic persecution of the Crimean Tatar people due to their principled position regarding the Russian occupation of Crimea.

He however believed that putting an end to systemic violations of fundamental human rights and freedoms in the occupied Crimea can only be possible if the international community compels ‘state-aggressors’ to comply strictly with international laws and legal obligations.

SYRIA

US presses Russia in bid to halt fighting

The US says it is working on plans to reduce the bloodshed in Syria and revive a nationwide ceasefire.

It says its “top priority” is to halt conflict in the city of Aleppo, where at least 200 people have died in a week of government raids and rebel shelling.

The US wants Russia to put pressure on the Syrian government to stop what it says is indiscriminate bombardment.

Russia says the strikes in Aleppo are targeting terrorists, but confirmed it was discussing a truce there.

Negotiations are under way to include Aleppo in a temporary “regime of calm”, Lieut Gen Sergei Kuralenko, who heads Russia’s ceasefire monitoring centre in Syria, told Russian media.

The Russian and Syrian governments have said the Aleppo strikes are targeting the Nusra Front – a jihadist force that is not party to a ceasefire agreed in February.

YEMEN

Yemen officials say peace talks suspended after Houthis seize base

The Yemeni government suspended direct peace talks to end the country’s civil war on Sunday after the Houthi movement and its armed allies seized a military base north of the capital Sanaa, two members of the official delegation to the talks said.

The Houthi assault killed several of the soldiers defending the Umaliqa base. Unlike most of Yemen’s soldiers, those at Umaliqa had refused to take sides in the war between the Iran-allied Houthis and the Saudi-backed government.

The Houthis had tolerated this neutrality until they launched a surprise push into the facility in Amran province and seized its large cache of weapons at dawn, local officials said.

“We have suspended the sessions indefinitely to protest these military actions and continued violations of the truce,” one member of the government delegation to the Yemen peace talks in Kuwait told Reuters.

VENEZUELA

Venezuelans lose sleep to save electricity

Venezuelans lost half an hour of sleep on Sunday when their clocks moved forward to save power, as the country grapples with a deep economic crisis.

The time change was ordered by President Nicolas Maduro as part of a package of measures to cope with a severe electricity shortage.

The government already ordered rolling blackouts and reduced the working week for public sector workers to two days.

Mr Maduro has blamed the energy crisis on a severe drought.

He says the drought has drained the country’s hydroelectric dams and its capacity to generate power. His critics say the crisis is due to mismanagement of the energy sector.

UNITED STATES

Anti-war priest Berrigan dies in US, aged 94

Daniel Berrigan, a Roman Catholic priest and prominent anti-war campaigner, has died at the age of 94.

Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, said Berrigan died on Saturday at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University.

A peace activist, Berrigan authored more than 50 books, including several on religion and activism, as well as poetry collections.

He won the prestigious Lamont Prize in 1957 for “Time Without Number”, a volume of his poetry.

He and his younger brother, the Reverend Phillip Berrigan, in the 1960s became leaders of the anti-war movement against the US invasion of Vietnam.

TURKEY

IS link to deadly Gaziantep blast

A suicide car bomber has killed two policemen in south-eastern Turkey.

The bomb went off outside police headquarters in the south-eastern city of Gaziantep, near the Syria border.

More than 20 people, some of them civilians, were injured in the early-morning explosion,

Police later raided the home of a suspected member of the so-called Islamic State group, who is believed to have carried out the attack.

His father has been detained for DNA testing.

Turkey has been hit by a series of deadly blasts over the past year, linked either to Kurdish militants or IS.