News in Brief

Date: 06 September 2021 - 22:53

News ID: ۹۴۰۶۷

BENI, CONGO (AFP) -- At least 30 people were killed in a weekend attack in the restive northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, local and UN sources said on Monday. The takfiris of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) are suspected to have carried out the attack in the Ituri area on Saturday, they said. A UN source confirmed that at least 30 people had died in the attack. One civilian who helped look for bodies said the victims had mostly been attacked with machetes or shot. The ADF, which the United States has deemed a terrorist group, is considered the deadliest of scores of armed militias that roam the mineral-rich eastern DR Congo. *** BEIJING (Reuters) -- German ambassador to China Jan Hecker has died, barely two weeks into the job, the European nation’s foreign office said on Monday. Hecker, 54, a foreign policy adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel, had just taken up his post on Aug. 24, the embassy in the Chinese capital said in a posting on its social media Wechat account. The cause of death has yet to be confirmed. “It is with deep sadness and dismay that we learned of the sudden death of the German ambassador to China,” Germany’s Federal Foreign Office said on its website. An embassy spokesman declined further comment to Reuters. Hecker had appeared “happy and all right” when he hosted an event about German artist Joseph Beuys at his Beijing home last Friday, a guest at the event said. *** WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The United States on Sunday strongly condemned what it said was Russia’s detention at the weekend of the deputy leader of the main representative body of Crimean Tatars and at least 45 other members of the ethnic group. A State Department statement said Nariman Dzhelyalov, deputy chairman of the Crimean Tatars’ Mejlis, was detained on Saturday by Russian occupation authorities in Crimea. It said at least 45 other Crimean Tatars had also been detained. Russia’s Interfax news agency earlier quoted an unnamed “informed source” as saying that Dzhelyalov and four other Crimean residents had been detained in connection with a damaged gas pipeline in the village of Perevalnoye, on the highway from Simferopol towards Yalta. Ukrainian Foreign Minster Dmytro Kuleba posted a tweet on Saturday saying Russia had “escalated terror in the occupied Crimea” by detaining five people, including Dzhelyalov. *** CETINJE, Montenegro (Reuters) -- Montenegro police used teargas against rock-throwing protesters during enthronement of a Serbian Orthodox Church cleric as the nation’s religious leader, with dozens reported injured. The enthronement of Joanikije II at a monastery in the town of Cetinje has stirred divisions within Montenegro over ties with neighboring Serbia. Montenegro left its union with Serbia in 2006, but its church remained under the Serbian church. Police used gas to disperse hundreds of protesters, some of whom threw rocks, bottles and firecrackers as church figures arrived by helicopter. Some people burned tires and sat on roads. Montenegro’s deputy police director Dragan Gorovic told state TV that 20 officers were hurt, while a state clinic in Cetinje said around 30 civilians sought help for injuries. The embassies of Germany, Italy, France, Britain, the United States and the European Union condemned violence around the enthronement of Joanikije II, who is known as the Metropolitan of Montenegro and Archbishop of Cetinje. *** LONDON (AP) — A former close aide to Prince Charles stepped down temporarily from his role as chief executive of a royal charity amid reports that he helped secure an honor for a Saudi donor. The Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday newspapers reported that Michael Fawcett coordinated support for an honor for Saudi businessman Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz. The Times said the businessman donated sums of more than 1.5 million pounds ($2.1 million) to The Prince’s Foundation to fund heritage restoration projects of interest to Charles, including residences Charles used. The report said Charles gave Mahfouz an honorary CBE, or Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, at a private ceremony in 2016. In 2003, Fawcett was accused of selling unwanted royal gifts but was cleared of financial misconduct allegations. He resigned from his position as valet but continued to work in other roles including as Charles’ events planner. *** KHARTOUM (Reuters) -- Sudanese authorities have seized a cargo of 72 boxes of weapons that arrived by air from Ethiopia and that they suspect were destined for use in “crimes against the state”, Sudan’s state news agency, SUNA, reported. Ethiopian Airlines said the weapons were hunting guns that were part of a legal, verified shipment. The weapons had arrived in Ethiopia from Moscow in May 2019, the committee found. The intended recipient of the weapons was unclear but the committee did not rule out that they were meant for former Bashir government loyalists who Sudanese authorities accuse of trying to undermine the country’s fragile transition towards democracy, according to SUNA. Tensions between Sudan and Ethiopia have been running high due to a spillover of the conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region and Ethiopia’s construction of a giant hydropower dam on the Blue Nile. The Tigray conflict has sent tens of thousands of refugees into eastern Sudan and triggered military skirmishes in an area of contested farmland along the border between the two countries.