Four South African peacekeepers kidnapped in Sudan’s conflict-torn Darfur region this month were released on Monday, the UN said.
The two men and two women from the joint UN/African Union UNAMID mission were kidnapped on April 11 from the region’s main town Nyala, the latest in a wave of abductions of foreign workers by young men demanding ransoms.
“We are grateful to have our colleagues back with us,” UNAMID chief Ibrahim Gambari said in a statement. “This day would not have been possible had it not been for the good cooperation of the government of the Sudan and the local authorities of South Darfur.”
PHOTO: AFP/UN-AFRICAN UNION FORCE IN SUDAN
A spokesman for a group calling itself the Movement for the Popular Struggle said on April 20 that they were holding the four and had agreed with the government to release them. The spokesman said his group had not been paid the ransom of around US$450,000 it had originally demanded.
Abductions of foreigners rose last year after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes in the region, charges he denies.
The UN statement said Gambari held a meeting on Sunday with al-Bashir, who had “pledged to do everything possible to assist in bringing about the safe return of the UNAMID personnel.”
Sudan’s National Elections Commission confirmed on Monday that Bashir was elected president after five days of voting last week.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
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