Africa News

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe said on Friday it would hold a delayed presidential election run-off on June 27 in which the opposition hopes to oust veteran leader Robert Mugabe after almost 30 years in power.

HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe turned the tables on the country's opposition on Friday, accusing them of being behind political violence since the country's March 29 polls.

HARARE, Zimbabwe - An election runoff between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will be held June 27, the electoral commission said in an announcement published Friday.

LAGOS (AFP) - Nigerian firefighters battled Friday to put out flames pouring from a burst oil pipeline a day after a huge explosion that Red Cross officials said killed 100 people.

PARIS (AFP) - A Chad army helicopter fired rockets Friday in an area close to Sudan's Darfur border racked by tension over rebel activity and refugee flows, a French military source told AFP.

HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwe's run-off presidential election will take place on June 27, the electoral commision announced on Friday in a government gazette.

HARARE (AFP) - Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will return to Zimbabwe on Saturday after more than a month out of the country following disputed elections, officials in his Movement for Democratic Change party said.

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden says in a new message that al-Qaida will continue its holy war against Israel and its allies until it liberates Palestine.

NAIROBI (AFP) - London-based Tullow Oil Plc on Friday announced the discovery of oil reserves in western Uganda, boosting hopes for the energy-starved east African nation.

RABAT, Morocco - A Moroccan court broadened investigations Thursday into two alleged terrorism cells, one accused of supporting insurgents in Iraq and the other of plotting suicide bombings in Casablanca last year.

LAGOS (AFP) - A court in Abuja on Thursday granted bail to a Biafran separatist leader and his companions who were a day before re-arraigned on treason charges, private television Channels reported here.

NDJAMENA (AFP) - The head of the African Union, Jean Ping, held talks with the presidents of Chad and Sudan on Thursday in a bid to resolve growing tensions between the two countries.

KHARTOUM, Sudan - The United Nations said Thursday it had evacuated 250 civilian staff from the town of Abyei following three days of clashes in the oil-rich region between Sudan's army and former southern rebels.

IJEGUN, Nigeria - A road-grader accidentally tore open a fuel pipeline Thursday and sent an inferno raging over houses and a school, setting off a stampede of terrified children and killing about 100 people and injuring 20, a Red Cross official said.

IJEGUN, Nigeria (Reuters) - At least 100 people were killed and scores injured when fuel from a pipeline ruptured by a bulldozer caught fire and exploded on Thursday in a village near Nigeria's biggest city of Lagos, the Red Cross said.

ALGIERS, Algeria - Algeria recorded 115 kidnappings last year "relating to terrorism" or involving demands for ransom, the interior minister said Thursday in a rare public tally of abductions.

JUBA, Sudan (AFP) - The leader of south Sudan and partner in the national government on Thursday distanced himself from political arrests following a Darfur rebel attack on Khartoum and urged an end to the conflict.

LAGOS (AFP) - About 100 people were burnt to death Thursday when an oil pipeline exploded in a northern suburb of Nigeria's biggest city Lagos, the Red Cross said.

KHARTOUM (AFP) - The UN said on Thursday it had airlifted more than 250 civilian staff from Sudan's flashpoint town of Abyei, where thousands of Sudanese are believed to have fled clashes in the contested oil region.

KHARTOUM (AFP) - Four Indian oil technicians and their Sudanese driver have been abducted in an area adjoining Sudan's disputed oil rich region of Abyei, the Indian ambassador to Sudan told AFP on Thursday.

ABYEI, Sudan (Reuters) - Thousands of civilians fled clashes between Sudan's former north-south civil war foes in the oil-rich central town of Abyei on Thursday before a ceasefire was agreed, officials said.

LAGOS (Reuters) - Several people were burnt to death and scores injured when fuel from a pipeline ruptured by an earthmover building a road on the outskirts of Lagos caught fire, the Red Cross said on Thursday.

CAIRO (AFP) - An Egyptian man was sentenced to 1,000 years behind bars on Thursday after scamming hundreds of people out of 280 million pounds (around 52 million dollars), a court official said.

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libyan authorities have arrested 240 illegal immigrants and are preparing to repatriate them, the interior ministry said on Thursday.

KIGALI (Reuters) - A 90-year-old Rwandan genocide survivor has been stabbed and burnt to death by a gang that included four assailants who had confessed to taking part in the 1994 slaughter, a body representing genocide survivors said on Thursday.

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria - Some 800,000 residents were forcibly evicted from their homes in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, over a four-year period to make way for development in the fast-growing city, a rights group said Thursday.

LONDON (AFP) - James Anderson's three wickets left New Zealand on the defensive at tea on the first day of the first Test against England at Lord's Thursday.

HARARE (AFP) - Zimbabwe has introduced a new half-a-billion dollar bank note in a bid to tackle cash shortages fed by rampant inflation, the central bank said on Thursday.

HARARE (AFP) - The Zimbabwean government on Thursday defended a decision by the country's electoral commission to delay a second round presidential poll by more than two months, saying it was acting within the law.