AROUND AFRICA: Journalists Slain in Mali, Congo Rebels Defeated

MALI: Journalists Found Slain

The Mali [click on image to enlarge]
CIA World Factbook

 Two French radio reporters were found slain in Mali Saturday just hours after they were kidnapped and a website in neighboring Mauritania says an al Qaeda affiliate is claiming responsibility for the murders, Reuters reported.

The dead were identified as Claude Verlon and Ghislaine Dupont. Their bodies were found Saturday (November 2) by a French patrol eight miles (12 kilometers) outside the town of Kidal (see map), where a Tuareg uprising last year plunged Mali into chaos, leading to a coup in the capital Bamako and the occupation of the northern half of the country by militants linked to al-Qaeda.

The news website Sahara Medias said on Wednesday (November 6) it had received a claim of responsibility from al Qaeda’s regional wing for the killing of two journalists.

According to Reuters, a Sahara Medias reporter said a spokesman for a senior regional commander for al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), had called by satellite phone to read a communique in Arabic. The caller had started by speaking in Tamashek, the language spoken by Tuaregs in northern Mali.

The communique said the killing was just a part of the price France will pay for this year’s military intervention by France, which drove out Islamist militants who had seized half the country.

Meanwhile, Paris says its timetable for withdrawing troops from Mali remains firm despite an upsurge in violence, according to the Voice of America. France has about 3,000 troops in Mali and intends to withdraw about 2,000 of them by year’s end.

The abduction of the two journalists came just days after the liberation of four French hostages in neighboring Niger.  The men had been held by AQIM for three years.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists a total of 42 journalists have been killed around the world so far this year, the New York Times reported.

M23 Rebels Give Up

The M23 rebel group in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is ending its insurgency, hours after the government claimed military victory, the BBC reports.

The DRC and its neighbors Rwanda (RW) and Uganda (UG).
(CIA World Factbook)

The M23 movement said it would adopt “purely political means” to achieve its goals and urged its fighters to disarm and demobilise. Meanwhile the government says the last remaining rebels had either surrendered or fled the country.

More than 800,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the turbulent region of the DRC since M23 — mostly ethnic Tutsis fighters who were integrated into the DRC Army in 2009 but then mutinied and revolted in 2012 over their alleged mistreatment by the Army.

The rebels announced they would disarm and pursue political talks just hours after government forces drove the rebels out of their last two hilltop bases of Tshanzu and Runyoni, Aljazeera reported. A two-week UN-backed offensive had cornered the rebels in the hills  along the border with Uganda and Rwanda.