AROUND AFRICA: Egypt, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan, Ghana

NORTH AFRICA.

Egypt Attack.

Ten soldiers were killed or wounded in a bomb attack on an Egyptian army vehicle in the Northern Sinai region on April 30, according to Reuters.

A bomb exploded in an armored vehicle south of Bir al-Abd city in the Northern Sinai region, a military spokesman said in a statement. No group claimed responsability for the attack, although militants loyal to Islamic State are active in the strategic border region.

Egypt has been fighting Islamist insurgents who have killed hundreds of police and soldiers in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula since the ousting of Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 following mass protests against his rule.

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Drone Attack in Libya.

Eastern Libyan forces laying siege to Tipoli, the country’s capital, are accusing their rivals of staging an attack in which a Turkish drone hit a food truck convoy in the country’s west, killing at least five civilians.

LIBYA (CIA World Factbook)

The militia groups loosely allied with a U.N.-supported — but weak — government in Tripoli denied attacking civilians. Ibnstead, they said, they targeted trucks carrying equipment and ammunition for eastern forces trying to take Tripoli, the Associated Press reported.

The fighting over Tripoli erupted last April, when east-based forces under commander Khalifa Hifter launched an offensive to capture the city. In recent weeks, violence has escalated with both sides accusing each other of shelling civilian neighborhoods. The U.N. has said the violence and the worsening humanitarian crisis in Libya could amount to war crimes.

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CENTRAL AFRICA.

South Sudan’s Strained Peace Deal.

Recent new fighting in South Sudan’s Central Equatoria state putting a strain on the country’s fragile peace agreements.

SOUTH SUDAN (CIA World Factbook)

A spokesman for the rebel National Salvation Front (NAS) said a joint force composed of soldiers from the army and the former rebel SPLM-IO attacked NAS positions in Central Equatoria state beginning on April 26, theVoA website reported.

“They went and attacked our bases in Senema, that is around Ombaci, and also in Mediba around Morobo, and in Kajo-Keji Kala 2. They also attacked our forces, and we responded,” NAS spokesman Samuel Suba told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.

Two NAS soldiers were killed and three others wounded during the fighting, according to Suba. The casualty figure could not be verified by other sources.

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EAST AFRICA.

Al-Shabab Terror.

The Somali militant group al-Shabab has executed three of its own members for alleged spying on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, local residents and regional officials said.

El Bur district commissioner Colonel Nur Hassan Gutale says the three men were executed by a firing squad on April 28 in the center of the town as dozens of people watched, VoA reported.

“According to our sources, the men are not from the town. The militants brought them there to execute and they executed them in public late Tuesday,” Gutale told VOA over the phone.

Al-Shabab has been trying to overthrow Somalia’s government and turn the country into a strict Islamic state.

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CORONAVIRUS.

Ghana

The Silicon Valley company, Zipline, is using drones to shuttle medical supplies and carry samples from suspected coronavirus patients to labs in Ghana’s big cities, allowing the government to more quickly monitor the spread of COVID-19.

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo, in a televised address to the nation on April 26,  said the virus had “exposed the deficiencies” of Ghana’s health care system, the result of years of underinvestment and neglect.

Akufo-Addo said the virus had also highlighted the crucial role of emergency services such as Zipline, which has been in operation for a year and is playing an active role in fighting the virus, VoA reported.

The tech company is delivering COVID-19 test samples from rural areas of Ghana to the country’s two testing centers, in Accra and Kumasi, the country’s second-largest city.