More than 200 inmates escaped from a prison in north-east Nigeria in the aftermath of the worst flooding there in over two decades, authorities have announced.

There have been 37 deaths in Borno state after parts of its capital, Maiduguri, were overrun by water on 9 September following the collapse of a dam, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). As many as 200,000 others have been displaced. Residents of the city said some areas were still flooded on Monday when the president, Bola Tinubu, visited.

In a statement on Sunday, Abubakar Umar, a spokesperson for the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS), said officials discovered that 281 inmates had escaped while being transferred to “a safe and secure facility” after their prison was flooded. Seven prisoners were recaptured while 274 others remain at large.

“The flood brought down the walls of the correctional facilities, including the medium-security custodial centre Maiduguri as well as the staff quarters in the city,” Abubakar said.

The NCS has begun a search for the missing prisoners in collaboration with other security agencies, he added.

According to local reports, reptiles, lions and other wildlife from the city’s Sanda Kyarimi Park zoo were washed into residential neighbourhoods by last week’s intense floods.

People displaced by the torrential rains are living in temporary shelters set up in six camps across the city. Maiduguri, the birthplace of a 15-year insurgency by the jihadist group Boko Haram, was once home to camps in some of the same locations for internally displaced persons (IDPs) but state authorities, keen to get people back to the rural areas, began closing them in the last three years. Relief materials have come from the federal government and the United Arab Emirates.

As many as 31.8 million Nigerians are already at risk of acute food insecurity, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Aid workers say things could get worse in the coming weeks, especially in northern Nigeria which is at the centre of the extreme weather crisis. There are also fears of potential cholera outbreak in the crowded camps.

“The area is now on high alert for outbreaks of diseases including cholera, malaria, and typhoid as well as animal and zoonotic diseases,” the FAO said in a statement.

In April, the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency launched the 2024 Annual Flood Outlook, warning of floods across most of Nigeria’s 36 states. But the rains surpassed the annual average as the impact of climate change ramp up around the globe.

So far, 29 states have been affected. FAO representatives say 1.3m hectares (3.2m acres) of land nationwide was submerged as of 10 September. About half of that was cropland.

“The severity of this flood [in Maiduguri] has far exceeded our estimates,” said Kashim Shettima, the vice-president and former governor of the state, during his assessment visit.

The floods in Nigeria come as people in neighbouring Cameroon’s Far North region are reeling from a flood on 28 August that led to 3,700 houses collapsing after water retention dykes broke.

The Benue River, which runs through Cameroon and Nigeria, hosts the Lagdo dam in the nearby North region of Cameroon which, when opened, is a yearly source of flooding in Nigeria. Aid workers at the FAO say states such as Adamawa, next door to Borno, are “at imminent risk” due to an expected discharge from the dam.

Shettima said the government was “committed to finding lasting solutions to this recurring issue”. But aid workers say more needs to be done as available infrastructure is being overwhelmed by the situation.

Suwaiba Dankabo, the deputy director of Action Aid Nigeria, told a press conference in Abuja on Friday: “Road and transport networks have been destroyed, making it even harder to deliver much-needed aid.”

Amnesty International has urged authorities in Angola to free four activists who were detained a year ago for planning a peaceful protest, and an influencer who criticised the president in a TikTok video.

The four activists were arrested in September last year before a protest against restrictions on motorcycle taxi drivers. They were sentenced to two years and five months in prison for “disobedience and resisting orders”. The health of three of the four activists has deteriorated sharply in prison, Amnesty said.

The southern African country’s government regularly clamps down on dissent. In August, the president, João Lourenço, signed into law two sweeping bills that extended security forces’ control over the media and permitted prison sentences of up to 25 years for protests that cause “vandalism” or service disruptions.

Vongai Chikwanda, Amnesty International’s deputy director for east and southern Africa, said: “One year in prison simply for peacefully protesting is a travesty of justice. We see a troubling pattern of Angolan authorities withholding medical care as a means of punishing peaceful dissent, amounting to torture.”

Adolfo Campos was in good health when he was imprisoned but has since lost much of his vision and become completely deaf in one ear, Amnesty said.

It said prison doctors recommended in February that Campos receive surgery externally, but that had been blocked.

Hermenegildo Victor José, known as Gildo das Ruas, also entered prison with no health problems. In June he started experiencing fever and aches, but he was not allowed to see a doctor until the beginning of August.

Das Ruas now cannot stand for more than 30 minutes without pain. A wheelchair was delivered to him on 15 August but he was initially stopped from using it.

Gilson Moreira, known as Tanaice Neutro, has had bowel surgery scheduled since 2022, which he was denied when he was imprisoned for 18 months. Amnesty International said he had continued to be prevented from having surgery.

Ana da Silva Miguel, an influencer also known as Neth Nahara, was arrested in August last year after she criticised the president in a TikTok livestream. Nahara, who is HIV positive, was denied her medication for eight months, Amnesty said.

Angola’s ministry of justice and human rights did not respond to requests for comment.

The oil-rich country has in recent years been courted by the US and the EU as they seek to fund infrastructure projects and counter Chinese influence.

Picturesque towns across central Europe are inundated by dirty flood water after heavy weekend rains turned tranquil streams into raging rivers that wreaked havoc on infrastructure.

The floods have killed at least 15 people and destroyed buildings from Austria to Romania. The destruction comes after devastating floods around the world last week when entire villages were submerged in Myanmar and nearly 300 prisoners escape a collapsed jail in Nigeria, where floods have affected more than 1 million people.

Climate scientists say they are troubled by the damage but unsurprised by the intensity. “The catastrophic rainfall hitting central Europe is exactly what scientists expect with climate change,” said Joyce Kimutai, of Imperial College London’s Grantham Institute.

She said the death and damage across Africa and Europe highlighted “how poorly prepared the world is for such floods”.

Scientists take care when attributing extreme rains to human influence because so many factors shape the water cycle. Although it is well established that hotter air can hold more moisture, whether violent downpours occur also depends on how much water is available to fall.

Sonia Seneviratne, a climate scientist at ETH Zürich, said immediate analyses of the central European floods suggested most of the water vapour came from the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea, both of which have grown hotter as a result of human-induced climate breakdown, resulting in more water evaporating into the air.

“On average, the intensity of heavy precipitation events increases by 7% for each degree of global warming,” she said. “We now have 1.2C of global warming, which means that on average heavy precipitation events are 8% more intense.”

Weather station data indicates that bursts of September rainfall have become heavier in Germany, Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia since 1950, Kimutai said.

In Poland, the floods collapsed a bridge and washed houses away, according to local media. In the Czech Republic, helicopters rescued stranded citizens from rising waters. In Austria, one firefighter is reported to have died in the rescue efforts.

In the Austrian capital, Vienna, which has been home to Europe’s biggest weather and climate conference since 2005, the rain flooded a motorway and closed metro lines.

Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zürich, said scientists at the conference used to discuss the physics of how climate change increases rainfall intensity over lunch on the banks of the New Danube. “It is ironic to now see these banks, where we were sitting in the sun and discussing the science of extreme precipitation, now being flooded.”

The death toll from floods hinges on how well communities prepare for the rain and respond to its effects. Scientists have urged governments to invest in adapting to extreme weather events through early warning systems, more resilient infrastructure and support schemes for victims, while also ending their reliance on fossil fuels.

“It’s clear that even highly developed countries are not safe from climate change,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Grantham Institute. “As long as the world burns oil, gas and coal, heavy rainfall and other weather extremes will intensify, making our planet a more dangerous and expensive place to live.”

A contentious South African education law has drawn furious condemnation from politicians and campaigners who claim it is putting Afrikaans education under threat while evoking for others an enduring association of the language with white minority rule.

The Basic Education Laws Amendment Act was signed into law on Friday by the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who said he would give dissenting parties in his coalition government three months to suggest alternatives to two sections that give provincial officials the powers to override admission decisions and force schools to teach in more than one of South Africa’s 12 official languages.

The provisions have meanwhile been welcomed by those who say they are necessary in order to stop some government schools using language to racially exclude children.

The controversy has tapped into multiple sensitive political topics in South Africa: forcing children to learn in languages they don’t understand, the enduring association for some of the Afrikaans language with apartheid, persistent racial inequalities and the parlous state of many schools.

“We have seen cases of learners being denied admissions to schools because of their language policies,” Ramaphosa, the leader of the African National Congress, the country’s largest party, said before signing the bill, which was passed before May’s elections. “The bill is part of the states’ ongoing effort to build an education system that is more effective and more equitable.”

The Democratic Alliance (DA), which gets the majority of its support from white voters and is the second largest party in South Africa’s coalition government, threatened legal action if mother-tongue schooling was not protected after the three-month negotiation period.

“Afrikaans-medium schools constitute less than 5% of the country’s schools,” said the DA’s leader and agriculture minister, John Steenhuisen, referring to schools that teach only in Afrikaans. “Their existence in no way contributes to the crisis in education, and turning them into dual-medium or English-medium schools will not help improve the quality of education for South Africa’s learners.”

Afrikaans evolved from the Dutch settlers around Cape Town, as well as African and south-east Asian enslaved people, local Indigenous people and their mixed-race Cape Coloured descendants. Some of the first texts in Afrikaans were written in Arabic script by Cape Malay Muslim scholars in the early 19th century.

Language and education have a tortuous history in South Africa. When the Boer war ended in 1902, Afrikaans became a form of resistance among white Afrikaners to British colonial rule and English education.

After Afrikaner nationalists took power in 1948, with policies including intentionally making segregated black schools worse, the language became identified with white minority rule. In 1976, hundreds of children were shot dead by police in the Soweto uprising when they marched peacefully against the imposition of Afrikaans tuition in schools.

According to census data, the number of South Africans speaking Afrikaans at home rose from 5.9 million in 1996 to 6.6 million in 2022, with the majority of speakers non-white. But by share of the population the figure has fallen from 14.5% to 10.6%, and some Afrikaner rights groups argue they are losing their language, culture and identity.

“For our cultural community it’s essential that we have schools where there is Afrikaans education, it’s used as the language of tuition and that it should be monolingual schools,” said Alana Bailey, the head of cultural affairs at Afriforum, which she said campaigns for minority rights, rejecting accusations of racism.

Since apartheid ended, many black parents living near the limited number of good historically white schools have tried to send their children there. In some cases this has resulted in officials trying to force Afrikaans-only schools to also teach in English, with legal battles reaching the constitutional court.

“There were historically quite a few Afrikaans schools that were not full to capacity and would use language provision as a way to create barriers to access,” said Brahm Fleisch, a professor of education at the University of the Witwatersrand, expressing his support for the new law as a safeguard. “When schools are full and there’s no evidence of discrimination on the basis of race … schools are not compelled to change their language policy.”

South Africa’s constitution guarantees the right to education in an official language of choice where “reasonably practicable”. But Marius Swart, a language policy expert at the University of Stellenbosch, said the lack of state capacity meant mother-tongue education in indigenous languages was still a distant dream for many children.

Meanwhile, most of South Africa’s children continue to struggle in school. In 2021, a survey found that 81% of 10-year-olds could not read for understanding.

“We still, to a very large extent, have a stratified school system with a relatively small elite of rich schools,” Swart said. “With relatively rich children from relatively rich families attending them and then many, many children who are in … poorly resourced schools and who really struggle.”

Two passenger trains have collided in Egypt’s Nile delta, killing at least three people, two of them children, authorities have said.

The crash happened on Saturday in the city of Zagazig, the capital of Sharqiya province, the country’s railway authority said. Egypt’s health ministry said the collision injured at least 40 others.

Train derailments and crashes are common in Egypt, where an ageing railway system has also been plagued by mismanagement. In recent years, the government announced initiatives to improve its railways.

In 2018, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said 250bn Egyptian pounds, or $8.13bn, would be needed to properly overhaul the neglected rail network.

Video from the site of the crash showed a train car crumpled by the impact, surrounded by crowds. Men tried to lift the injured through the windows of a passenger car.

Last month, a train crashed into a truck crossing the train tracks in the Mediterranean province of Alexandria, killing two people.

Thousands of mourners in Uganda paid their respects on Saturday to Rebecca Cheptegei, the Olympic athlete who died last week in Kenya after her partner set her on fire. The military funeral took place in a remote town near the Kenyan border.

Military officers played a prominent role in the funeral because Cheptegei held the rank of sergeant in Uganda’s army, said military spokesperson Brig Felix Kulayigye, adding that she deserved a “gun salute that befits her rank”.

Athletes, family members and others delivered their eulogies before thousands in a sport field in the district of Bukwo.

“As a nation, we are indeed in a black and dark moment,” said Ajilong B Modestar, the Bukwo resident district commissioner. “We condemn in the strongest terms the manner in which Rebecca died … We should not continue battering women in this manner.”

Cheptegei, who was 33, was buried at her father’s homestead.

She died after her body suffered 80% burns in the attack by Dickson Ndiema, who doused her in petrol at her home in western Kenya’s Trans-Nzoia County on 3 September. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed to his injuries.

According to a report filed by the local chief, they quarrelled over a piece of land the athlete bought in Kenya.

The horrific attack shocked many and strengthened calls for the protection of female runners facing exploitation and abuse in the east African country.

Cheptegei’s body was returned to Uganda on Friday in a sombre procession after a street march by dozens of activists in the western Kenyan town of Eldoret who demanded an end to violence against female athletes.

Cheptegei is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in a worrying pattern of gender-based violence in recent years. Kenya’s high rates of violence against women have prompted several marches this year.

Ugandan officials have condemned the attack, demanding justice for Cheptegei. First lady Janet Museveni, who also serves as Uganda’s education and sports minister, described the attack as “deeply disturbing”.

Don Rukare, chairman of the National Council of Sports of Uganda, said in a statement on X that the attack was “a cowardly and senseless act that has led to the loss of a great athlete”.

Four in 10 women, or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women, have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey.

Many Ugandan athletes train across the border in Kenya, an athletics powerhouse with better facilities. Some of the region’s best runners train together at a high-altitude centre in Kenya’s west.

Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics, finishing in 44th place, less than a month before the attack. She had also represented Uganda at other competitions.

Zimbabwe will cull 200 elephants as it faces an unprecedented drought that has led to food shortages, a move that tackle a ballooning population of the animals, the country’s wildlife authority has said.

Zimbabwe had “more elephants than it needed”, the environment minister said in parliament on Wednesday, adding that the government had instructed the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZimParks) to begin the culling process.

The 200 elephants would be hunted in areas where they had clashed with humans, including Hwange, home of Zimbabwe’s largest natural reserve, said the director general of ZimParks, Fulton Mangwanya.

Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Sithembiso Nyoni, told Voice of America: “We are having a discussion with ZimParks and some communities to do like what Namibia has done, so that we can cull the elephants and mobilise the women to maybe dry the meat, package it, and ensure that it gets to some communities that need the protein.”

Zimbabwe is home to an estimated 100,000 elephants – the second-biggest population in the world after Botswana.

Due to conservation efforts, Hwange is home to 65,000 of the animals, more than four times its capacity, according to ZimParks. Zimbabwe last culled elephants in 1988.

Neighbouring Namibia said this month that it had already killed 160 wildlife animals in a planned cull of more than 700, including 83 elephants, to cope with its worst drought in decades.

Zimbabwe and Namibia are among a swathe of countries in southern Africa that have declared a state of emergency because of drought.

About 42% of Zimbabweans live in poverty, according to UN estimates, and authorities say about 6 million will require food assistance during the November to March lean season, when food is scarcest.

The move to hunt the elephants for food was criticised by some, not least because the animals are a major draw for tourists.

“Government must have more sustainable eco-friendly methods to dealing with drought without affecting tourism,” said Farai Maguwu, director of the nonprofit Centre for Natural Resource Governance.

“They risk turning away tourists on ethical grounds. The elephants are more profitable alive than dead,” he said.

“We have shown that we are poor custodians of natural resources and our appetite for ill-gotten wealth knows no bounds, so this must be stopped because it is unethical.”

But Chris Brown, a conservationist and CEO of the Namibian Chamber of Environment, said elephants had a “devastating effect on habitat if they are allowed to increase continually, exponentially”.

“They really damage ecosystems and habitats, and they have a huge impact on other species which are less iconic and therefore matter less in the eyes of the Eurocentric, urban armchair conservation people,” he said.

“Those species matter as much as elephants.”

Namibia’s cull of elephants has been condemned by conservationists and the animal rights group Peta as shortsighted, cruel and ineffective.

But the government said the 83 to be culled would be only a small fraction of the estimated 20,000 elephants in the arid country, and would relieve pressure on grazing and water supplies.

Michaela Mabinty DePrince, a trailblazer and inspiration to many in the ballet world, has died at 29, a spokesperson announced on her Instagram page on Friday. No cause of death has yet been reported.

“Her life was one defined by grace, purpose, and strength,” the caption said. “Her unwavering commitment to her art, her humanitarian efforts, and her courage in overcoming unimaginable challenges will forever inspire us. She stood as a beacon of hope for many, showing that no matter the obstacles, beauty and greatness can rise from the darkest of places.”

DePrince’s family released a statement following the announcement of her death.

“I am truly in a state of shock and deep sadness. My beautiful sister is no longer here,” Mia DePrince, her sister, wrote. “From the very beginning of our story back in Africa, sleeping on a shared mat in the orphanage, Michaela (Mabinty) and I used to make up our own musical theater plays and act them out. We created our own ballets … When we got adopted, our parents quickly poured into our dreams and arose the beautiful, gracefully strong ballerina that so many of you knew her as today. She was an inspiration.”

Born Mabinty Bangura in Sierra Leone, DePrince was sent to an orphanage aged three, after both of her parents died in the country’s civil war. At the orphanage, she experienced mistreatment and malnourishment, in part due to her having vitiligo, she told the Associated Press in 2012.

“I lost both my parents, so I was there [the orphanage] for about a year and I wasn’t treated very well because I had vitiligo,” she said at the time. “We were ranked as numbers, and number 27 was the least favorite and that was my number, so I got the least amount of food, the least amount of clothes and whatnot.”

After receiving word that the orphanage would be bombed, DePrince described walking shoeless for miles to reach a refugee camp. Her adoptive mother, who adopted DePrince and two other girls, including Mia, from the orphanage after meeting them in Ghana in 1999, said Michaela was “sick and traumatized by the war”, with tonsillitis, fever, mononucleosis and swollen joints. DePrince was four when she was adopted and moved to the United States.

Her passion for ballet began as a young girl in Sierra Leone after she saw a photo of a ballerina. But despite beginning to train in ballet at five, DePrince still experienced trials. At eight, she was told America was not ready for a Black girl ballerina, even though she had been selected to perform the role of Marie in The Nutcracker. At nine, a teacher told her mother that Black girls were not worth investing money in.

DePrince eventually attended the Rock School for Dance Education, a prestigious and selective ballet school.

At 17, she was featured in First Position, a documentary that follows six dancers as they prepare for the Youth America Grand Prix. She received a scholarship to study at American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School of Ballet. After graduating from high school, DePrince worked at the Dance Theatre of Harlem, becoming the youngest principal dancer in the theatre’s history.

In 2012, she performed in her first professional full ballet in South Africa. The following year, she joined the Dutch National Ballet’s junior company.

Audiences who are unfamiliar with ballet might recognize DePrince from Beyonce’s Lemonade, in which the then 21-year-old dances wearing an old-fashioned tutu and headpiece. In 2021, she joined the Boston Ballet as a second soloist. That year, she performed the leading role in Coppelia, a ballet film.

At the Boston Ballet, DePrince told reporters about how Black dancers who came before her helped motivate her despite experiencing racism and xenophobia.

“I’m very lucky,” DePrince said at the time. “There was Lauren Anderson – I had somebody to look up to. The Houston Ballet. Heidi Cruz, the Pennsylvania Ballet when I was younger. There’s also Misty Copeland. There’s not a lot of us. But what I always try to think about, and what my passion is, is spreading more poppies in a field of daffodils, so to have more Black and brown dancers.”

Even with her successes, DePrince did not forget her early childhood. She became a humanitarian and throughout her career expressed a desire to open a school for dance and the arts in Sierra Leone.

“That would be amazing – I’d like to use the money we earn from this book to open the school,” DePrince told the Guardian in 2015. “It’ll have to be when I retire from dancing. The arts can change you as a person. Dancing helped me share my emotions and connect to my family – it helped me feel like I was special and not the ‘devil’s child’. Those kids won’t have the same opportunities I had, and I don’t think they deserve that.”

She spent much of her career advocating for and promoting the inclusion of Black dancers in ballet.

“There are practically no black people in ballet, so I need to speak out,” she told the Guardian.

In lieu of flowers, DePrince’s family has asked people to donate to War Child, an organization DePrince supported.

“This work meant the world to her, and your donations will directly help other children who grew up in an environment of armed conflict,” they wrote. “Thank you.”

A Briton and three Americans are among 37 people sentenced to death on Friday over an attempt to overthrow the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Six people were killed during the botched coup attempt led by the opposition figure Christian Malanga on 19 May that targeted the presidential palace and a close ally of President Félix Tshisekedi.

Armed men first attacked the parliamentary speaker Vital Kamerhe’s home in Kinshasa, then briefly occupied an office of the presidency, before Malanga, a US-based Congolese politician, was killed by security forces.

Malanga was shot while resisting arrest soon after live-streaming the attack on his social media, the Congolese army said.

The defendants, who also include a Belgian, a Canadian national and several Congolese, can appeal against the verdict on charges that included terrorism, murder and criminal association. Fourteen people were acquitted in the trial, which opened in July.

The three Americans convicted were Malanga’s son Marcel Malanga, 21, as well as Tyler Thompson Jr and Benjamin Zalman-Polun.

Marcel had told the court that his father, from whom he had been estranged, threatened to kill him unless he participated. He said it was his first time visiting the country at the invitation of his father whom he had not seen in years.

Thompson, 21, flew to Africa from Utah with Marcel for what his family believed was a vacation with all expenses paid by the elder Malanga, the court previously heard.

The pair had played high school football together in Salt Lake City. Other teammates had accused Marcel of offering up to $100,000 to join him on a “security job” in DRC.

Thompson’s family have said he had no knowledge of the elder Malanga’s intentions, nor any plans for political activism or intentions to enter DRC. They have said they understood the itinerary to be South Africa and Eswatini.

Zalman-Polun, 36, was a business associate of Christian Malanga.

There as no official information available about the Briton, who was reported to also be a naturalised Congolese citizen.

The verdict was read out on live television in the yard of Ndolo military prison on the outskirts of Kinshasa.

In March, DRC reinstated the death penalty, lifting a 21-year-old moratorium, as authorities struggle to curb violence and militant attacks.

The justice ministry said at the time that the ban from 2003 had allowed offenders accused of treason and espionage to get away without sufficient punishment.

The EU fears its credibility is at stake as it seeks to weigh growing concerns about the crushing of dissent in Tunisia while preserving a controversial migration deal with the north African country, according to a leaked document.

An internal report drafted by the EU’s diplomatic service (EEAS), seen by the Guardian, details “a clear deterioration of the political climate and a shrinking civic space” under the Tunisian president, Kais Saied, who has suspended parliament and concentrated power in his hands since starting his term of office in 2019.

EU officials expect Saied to remain in power after presidential elections on 6 October. The buildup to the vote has been marked by the jailing of opponents and the prosecution of dissenters under the pretext of spreading false information.

The document will fuel concerns about the 2023 EU-Tunisia migration pact, aimed at stopping people from reaching Europe from the country, which has already triggered accusations of bankrolling dictators.

“EU-Tunisia relations have become more complex,” concludes the document, which the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, sent to the bloc’s foreign ministers on 7 July. “The EU continues to have a keen interest in preserving its partnership with Tunisia in order to ensure the country’s stability,” the report continues, describing this tie as a means to ensure socioeconomic stability, respect for human rights and “continue[d] effective cooperation on migration management”.

The EU fears that without such support Tunisia will fall under the influence of “hostile third countries”, which, although they are not named, almost certainly refers to “competitors” Russia, Iran and China.

And the report lays bare the fears of Borrell’s team that the EU’s credibility could suffer as the bloc seeks to weigh human rights with curbing migration and pursuing broader ties. “This will entail striking an increasingly difficult balance between the EU’s credibility in terms of values and its interest in staying constructively engaged with the Tunisian authorities,” it notes.

The five-page report recounts the arrest of opposition politicians, journalists, lawyers and businesspeople before next month’s presidential elections. Also arrested have been people working for NGOs that help migrants, “the majority of which are implementing partners of EU-funded programmes”, the EU document notes.

Since the EU report was written, more people have been detained, including the veteran human rights activist and journalist Sihem Bensedrine, the former president of the Truth and Dignity Commission, which was set up after the Arab spring to investigate decades of human rights abuses. She was ordered into pre-trial detention on 1 August, after an investigation widely considered to have been based on trumped-up charges.

Before her arrest, Bensedrine had spoken out against political repression and the “poisonous atmosphere” in Tunisia, after Saied’s racist tirades against migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

The EEAS report notes that “public outcry and scrutiny” about violence, evictions and other mistreatment of migrants and asylum seekers “in which the authorities are often implicated” raises “critical questions about EU’s support to border management authorities”.

The report was commissioned by Borrell and sent to 27 EU foreign ministers.

The Guardian shared a copy with Hussein Baoumi at Amnesty International, who said its analysis reflected a very dire situation. “There is no hiding from that reality: that the situation in Tunisia in terms of human rights and democratic backsliding is very worrying.”

The final part of the report, however, was “like it was written by a completely different person” who had not read the earlier pages, he said. “It is saying that the EU must continue to engage more with the Tunisian authorities, continue to expand cooperation, to expand their partnership, even though it’s very clearly aware that this would be in violation of the EU’s commitments towards promoting human rights, to international law and rule of law.”

“By expanding cooperation with Tunisia in order for international migration control,” he said, the EU “has given quite some leverage to Tunisia”.

Udo Bullmann, a veteran Social Democrat MEP, said the political and human rights situation in Tunisia was “worrisome now” and had been “worrisome” when the memorandum of understanding was signed. “The European Commission has granted EU taxpayer’s money to an authoritarian regime that tries to restrict all opposition through inhuman methods,” he said.

The EU promised €105m to Tunisia in 2023 to fight people smugglers, expanding an existing multimillion-euro border-control fund. The Tunisian government later said it had handed back €60m to Brussels.

The commission, Bullmann added, should investigate the human rights situation of a country before undertaking any foreign policy.

The commission has been contacted for comment.

The three candidates to be the next secretary general of the Commonwealth have called for reparations for countries that were affected by slavery and colonisation.

The candidates from the Gambia, Ghana and Lesotho expressed their support for either financial reparations or “reparative justice”, as they made their pitches to lead the 56-country organisation at a debate hosted by the Chatham House thinktank in London on Wednesday.

Calls for reparations for the harms caused by slavery and colonialism have grown since the murder of George Floyd by police in 2020 sparked Black Lives Matter protests globally and led many governments, institutions and individuals to examine how they had historically benefited from the slave trade.

African and Caribbean countries formed an alliance last year to pressure former slave-owning states to pay for “historical mass crimes”.

“Financial reparations is good,” said Shirley Botchwey, Ghana’s foreign minister. “Whether or not the Commonwealth has a role to play will depend on the heads of government, who will give the secretary general her marching orders.”

Joshua Setipa, a former trade minister for Lesotho, said he would not wait to get involved in the reparations debate. “I support the idea of reparative justice,” he said. “The Commonwealth has a long history of facilitating discussions around difficult issues.

“We’ve dealt with racism, which was even more divisive than this,” he said, a nod to the organisation’s history in helping to negotiate an end to white-minority rule in Zimbabwe and later South Africa.

Mamadou Tangara, The Gambia’s foreign minister, said: “I am fully in support of reparatory justice. The Commonwealth can use its convening power to facilitate the dialogue and make it happen.”

The Commonwealth evolved from the ashes of the British empire. Its 56 members, all but four of them former British colonies, have a combined population of 2.7 billion. King Charles is the ceremonial head of the organisation, having taken over after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, who was its most enthusiastic proponent.

All three candidates to succeed Patricia Scotland as secretary general batted off suggestions that it was a colonial relic, arguing that countries had made an independent choice to be a part of a grouping they said could advocate for action on climate change and youth unemployment.

The leadership vote will take place at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Samoa from 21 to 26 October.

Extreme religious groups and political parties are targeting schools around the world as part of a coordinated and well-funded attack on gender equality, according to a new report.

Well-known conservative organisations aim to restrict girls’ access to education, change what is on the curriculum, and influence educational laws and policies, according to Whose Hands on our Education, a report by the Overseas Development Institute.

Tactics include removing sex education from schools, banning girls from learning, reinforcing patriarchal gender stereotypes in textbooks and rejecting gender-inclusive language in schools.

Ayesha Khan, senior research fellow at the ODI and one of the authors of the report, said: “Education is a key enabler for gender equality and has the power to shape lives.

“This research shows how a small group of highly financed anti-rights organisations and politicians and militant groups are intent on disrupting the transformative opportunities that education provides,” she said.

These organisations have received billions of pounds in funding to advance their agenda, according to evidence in the report. At least $3.7bn (£2.8bn) was channelled to anti-gender equality organisations globally between 2013 and 2017.

In Africa, more than $54m was spent by US-based Christian groups between 2007 and 2020 to campaign against LGBTQ+ rights and sex education.

Funding, from sources that include Russian oligarchs and political parties, has led to the creation of new organisations and encouraged existing ones to campaign against sexuality education and LGBTQ+ rights, the report found.

For example, donors from Britain, the US, Germany and Italy spent more than $5m from 2016 to 2020 on projects run by or benefiting Ghanaian religious organisations whose leaders have campaigned against LGBTQ+ rights.

Islamist funding across the Muslim world is hard to trace, the report said, but Pakistan has received billions in Saudi loans and direct aid, along with private funding from Gulf states, to promote Wahhabism, a fundamentalist and puritanical movement within Sunni Islam. One estimate put Saudi state funding for this at $75bn from 1979 to 2003. Textbooks in the country portray women as guardians of traditions, culture and morality, and sex education remains taboo.

Organised efforts have also blocked sex education initiatives in South Africa, Brazil and the Philippines, removing material on homosexuality and replacing it with content that promotes sexual abstinence and “traditional family values”.

In Chile, Catholic schools have used educational material that portrays men as heads of households with messages on the importance of wives being submissive, as well as stereotypes of men as being more intelligent and capable than women.

The report also outlined direct political power in countries around the world that enables the most regressive policies, such as the Taliban government’s exclusion of girls from all but primary education in Afghanistan.

“We’re dealing with a global anti-rights movement and resurgence of patriarchal norms,” said Khan. “We need to understand how the education sector is a site of really severe contestations.”

The habitat of the largest giant tortoise population in the world is threatened by a Qatari-funded hotel development that aims to bring luxury yachts, private jets and well-heeled tourists to a remote island in the Indian Ocean, conservationists have warned.

Plans for an upscale resort on Assomption, which is part of the Aldabra island group, are currently under discussion by the Seychelles authorities, and construction is already finished on an airport expansion that would allow bigger aircraft to land on the 11.6-sq-km (4.5-sq-mile) coral island.

The developers have said they will follow world class sustainability practices. But wildlife conservation organisations and biologists argue that the project is being rushed through without sufficient analysis of the dangers. They say it should be halted until there is independent scrutiny of the risks posed to island fauna, which also include whales, turtles and many species of birds.

They also fear there may be knock-on effects on the Aldabra atoll, which is a Unesco-protected ecosystem just 17 miles (27km) from Assomption. Aldabra is considered one of the world’s conservation jewels. It is most famous as a refuge for about 150,000 giant tortoises that bear the same name and are known for their longevity and immense size; males have an average weight of 250kg and a carapace of more than 122 cm.

In captivity, the oldest on record was a tortoise called Adwaita, who is reputed to have died at the age of 255 years in 2006 in Kolkata zoo, India. Other individuals include Darwin, who died in Blackpool zoo at the age of 105, and Esmeralda, who is said to be 180.

Giant tortoises were wiped out from most Indian Ocean islands in the 19th century as a result of predation by sailors, but the Aldabra population thrived thanks to their isolation. Along with 400 other endemic species and the extraordinary colours of the landscape, they were part of why the atoll was listed as a world heritage site by Unesco in 1982.

In recent decades, access has largely been limited to researchers, but the new high-end development may draw some of the world’s richest people much nearer.

Unesco said it had been informed by a third party about the potential project on Assomption, which might have an impact on the Aldabra atoll world heritage site. A spokesperson said: “Unesco is following the situation and has requested further information from the Seychelles authorities, recalling the need to protect the outstanding universal value of the site.” The UN body has sent a letter to Seychelles president Wavel Ramkalawan outlining its concerns.

Local conservation groups have also alerted the authorities to the ecological risks they say are posed by the hotel project proposed by Assets Group, a Qatari-owned company. These include invasive alien species, disturbance of tortoise and turtle habitats, destruction of sand dunes for construction, pollution, increased air and ocean traffic, and soil and plant damage.

While the main impacts would be on Assomption, there have been concerns about the threat to Adambra, according to a scoping document seen by the Guardian and compiled by the Island Conservation Society, which oversaw the environmental impact assessment.

The Indian Ocean Tortoise Alliance said the development jeopardised the Seychelles reputation as a global leader in marine environment protection: “The Assomption Island development project has the potential to significantly disrupt and inflict irreparable damage to one of the most precious national treasures of Seychelles, and indeed one of the most pristine and unique natural places still remaining on our planet,” observed the alliance’s founder, Thomas Kaplan, in a submission earlier this year.

Another organisation, the Seychelles Islands Foundation, called for an immediate halt of construction until a biosecurity management plan was put in place. The foundation said that while it was not opposed in principle to the economic development of Assomption, it should not be rushed.

“Given the proximity of Assomption to Aldabra, it is crucial to implement biosecurity measures that prevent the introduction of any invasive alien species to either island, given the devastating impacts they can have,” a spokesperson said in an email.

There are also questions about the speed at which the project is moving forward and the lack of independent scrutiny. The main body responsible for the environmental impact assessment is the Island Conservation Society, which is part of the entity that is advocating for the project, the Island Development Corporation (IDC). This is headed by one of the most powerful figures in the Seychelles, Glenny Savy.

The IDC says it is following due process and helping the Seychelles economy. It denies that the Assomption development will interfere with the habitat of the Aldabra atoll and said that, in any case, tortoises have adapted well to development in the past, and restoration of native vegetation and provision of water sources for the hotel will benefit the giant reptiles.

In an email, the IDC said concerns about disturbance of whale migration routes and pollution of marine environments were unfounded because no motorised water sports will be permitted in the vicinity of Assomption and maritime traffic will be limited to resupply boats and vessels with staff, guests and visitors. It said strict biosecurity protocols have been put in place for the construction and operational phases of the development. Half a dozen horses will be introduced for guests to ride around the island without the need for motor vehicles. The IDC said it was experienced and capable of ensuring environmental safeguards would be adequate.

“In conclusion, we believe that Aldabra, much like the Galapagos – another Unesco world heritage site – should be accessible to the world. Currently, Aldabra’s access is limited to a select few, unlike the Galapagos, which welcomes global visitors,” a spokesperson said in an email.

The Assets Group, one of the largely privately-owned developers in the Gulf, said its focus was on preserving and protecting Assomption and its ecosystem. It said it had conducted all the necessary environmental impact assessments working with local organisations.

“Our approach is to protect species and reintroduce native ones. All planning and any future building will be conducted in a responsible manner, following sustainable best practice, with effective waste and water management in addition to regenerating the island’s biodiversity, which has been severely impacted in recent decades,” it said, referring to decades of guano mining on Assomption. “The planned development, when it gets underway, will revive and regenerate the island of Assomption, in collaboration with leading sustainability experts.”

Floods in north Nigeria have killed more than 80% of the animals in a large zoo housing wildlife from lions and crocodiles to buffaloes and ostriches, the facility has said.

“Some deadly animals have been washed away into our communities, like crocodiles and snakes,” the Sanda Kyarimi Park zoo added in a statement on the floods in the northern Borno state, urging residents to take precautions.

Floods began when a dam overflowed after heavy rains, uprooting thousands of people.

The disaster has affected other facilities in the state capital, Maiduguri, including the post office and a teaching hospital, said the office of the Nigerian president, Bola Tinubu, which told people to evacuate the worst-hit areas.

“President Tinubu extends his heartfelt condolences to the government and people of the state, especially to the families that have lost their means of livelihood due to the disaster triggered by the overflow of the Alau Dam,” the statement said, saying humanitarian needs would be addressed.

Floods in the north-east of Nigeria killed at least 49 people last month, while a 2022 flood killed more than 600.

Borno state, the birthplace of the Boko Haram jihadist organisation, also continues to grapple with a 15-year insurgency that has killed and displaced many.

A South African farmer and two of his employees have been accused of killing two women and feeding their bodies to his pigs.

The killings of Maria Makgatho and Locadia Ndlovu, also named in local media as Kudzai Ndlovu, allegedly took place when the two women trespassed on a farm in the northern province of Limpopo in August. They were scavenging for expired dairy products, which local media reported had been left there to feed the pigs.

The farm owner, Zachariah Johannes Olivier, the superviser Andrian Rudolph de Wet and William Musora, an agricultural worker, face two charges of premeditated murder, one of attempted murder and one of possession of an unlicensed firearm. Musora, who is from Zimbabwe, has also been charged with being in South Africa illegally.

The two women were allegedly shot on Olivier’s farm. A third man, who local media reported was Ndlovu’s husband, was injured and crawled to a road where he screamed for help. Some days later, police discovered the women’s decomposing bodies in a pigsty on the farm.

The three accused men appeared in court on Tuesday to apply for bail. The hearing was postponed until October.

The case has caused outrage in a country with high rates of violent crime, where mistreatment and underpayment of farm workers is rife, farmers have been murdered and the majority black population is still mostly excluded from land ownership, as they were under apartheid.

Members of political parties protested outside the court, demanding the harshest possible sentences for the men and for them to be denied bail.

The South African Human Rights Commission, an independent official body, condemned the killings. It said it would “have anti-racism dialogues with the affected communities”, calling on people not to take the law into their own hands.

Associated Press contributed to this story.

The former partner of Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who had been accused of killing her by dousing her in petrol and setting her on fire, has died from burns sustained during the attack, the Kenyan hospital where he was being treated said on Tuesday.

Cheptegei, 33, who competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in the 1 September attack and died four days later.

Her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, died at 7.50pm local time on Monday, said Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in western Kenya, where Cheptegei was also treated and died. “He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters.

Cheptegei, who finished 44th in Paris, is the third elite sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Her death has put the spotlight on domestic violence in the East African country, particularly within its running community.

Rights groups say female athletes in Kenya are at a high risk of exploitation and violence at the hands of men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.

Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The 2022 survey found that 41% of married women had faced violence.

Globally, a woman is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, according to a 2023 UN Women study.

A new alliance between Egypt and Turkey designed to end a long-running dispute over events in the Middle East faces it first major test in the shape of a worsening political crisis in Libya linked to control of its oil wealth.

Egypt and Turkey fell out in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab spring, primarily because of the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s coup against his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi, an ally of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Nearly three years of rapprochement culminated last week with Sisi travelling to Ankara to meet Erdoğan. There the two signed more than 30 memorandums of understanding designed to increase trade to $15bn (£11.5bn) over five years. The two countries have been brought together by the need to boost their economies, as well as concern about the war in Gaza.

But analysts say that if the two countries remain at odds over how to end Libya’s political divisions, the promise of a wider new era of cooperation is likely to prove a false dawn. Libya’s political institutions have been divided between east and west since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Turkey has supported the regime in Libya’s west, sending equipment and troops in 2019 when it looked as if Tripoli would fall to an attack being mounted by the authoritarian warlord Khalifa Haftar. Haftar, whose family dominate politics in eastern Libya, is backed by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.

At last Wednesday’s meeting in Ankara, Sisi and Erdoğan agreed to turn the page on Libya, but the practical implications of such a bold goal were left vague.

The immediate challenge is to resolve a fresh crisis over Libyan resources which was sparked three weeks ago after the dismissal of the governor of Libya’s central bank, Sadiq al-Kabir. He fled to self-imposed exile in Turkey, saying he feared for his life after his removal by political bodies linked to supporters of the Tripoli-based government headed by Abdul Hamid Dabaiba.

The central bank oversees the internal distribution of the largest oil wealth in Africa, and has $80bn of foreign exchange reserves. Dabaiba believed Kabir had become too critical of his government’s corruption-fuelled spending, and had switched sides by channelling money to theeast. But Kabir pointed out government expenditures for 2024 were planned to be 37.5% higher than revenues.

With eastern Libya demanding Kabir’s return and decrying his ousting as unconstitutional, the impasse has led to the closure of many oilfields and many of the central bank’s foreign exchange transactions to be frozen by global banks which under US pressure will not support Kabir’s removal.

The central bank has been one of the few functioning Libyan institutions, and western powers have opposed Kabir’s sacking, regarding him as a flawed but rare source of stability.

In a sign of the importance of Libya to Turkey’s future relations with Egypt, the Turkish head of intelligence, Ibrahim Kalin, flew to Tripoli immediately after the Erdoğan-Sisi summit.

Kalin appears to be trying to persuade Dabaiba to let Kabir back into office on an interim basis, or to find a new consensus board to head the bank.

Alia Brahimi, a journalist and specialist in politics of the Middle East and north Africa, says in a forthcoming piece in Atlantic Council that the disputes inside Libya are between elite families over economic resources and this changes the equation for Turkey or at least makes the calculations different to 2019.

She also points to growing financial partnership between Turkish and Libyan businesses in the country’s east, for instance the construction of the largest steel and iron production plant in the world in Benghazi, means it is not predestined that Turkey would once more extend carte blanche military support to the government in Tripoli.

At the same time western Libya has given Turkish troops near-total immunity in a memorandum of understanding, so it would be a large sacrifice to abandon Dabaiba’s quest to control the central bank

The UN and western ambassadors have called for the Kabir crisis to be resolved through consensus, probably involving his interim return.

One observer said: “The international community is back in full crisis mode about Libya because they realise such are its economic problems it could collapse very quickly, and turn into another failed state on the Med. The security implications in terms of migration and instability matter. But there is still no long-term plan to resolve the country’s divisions and the problem is that the corrupt financial interests of the elite have for years hollowed out Libya”.

A new alliance between Egypt and Turkey designed to end a long-running dispute over events in the Middle East faces it first major test in the shape of a worsening political crisis in Libya linked to control of its oil wealth.

Egypt and Turkey fell out in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab spring, primarily because of the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s coup against his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi, an ally of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Nearly three years of rapprochement culminated last week with Sisi travelling to Ankara to meet Erdoğan. There the two signed more than 30 memorandums of understanding designed to increase trade to $15bn (£11.5bn) over five years. The two countries have been brought together by the need to boost their economies, as well as concern about the war in Gaza.

But analysts say that if the two countries remain at odds over how to end Libya’s political divisions, the promise of a wider new era of cooperation is likely to prove a false dawn. Libya’s political institutions have been divided between east and west since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Turkey has supported the regime in Libya’s west, sending equipment and troops in 2019 when it looked as if Tripoli would fall to an attack being mounted by the authoritarian warlord Khalifa Haftar. Haftar, whose family dominate politics in eastern Libya, is backed by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.

At last Wednesday’s meeting in Ankara, Sisi and Erdoğan agreed to turn the page on Libya, but the practical implications of such a bold goal were left vague.

The immediate challenge is to resolve a fresh crisis over Libyan resources which was sparked three weeks ago after the dismissal of the governor of Libya’s central bank, Sadiq al-Kabir. He fled to self-imposed exile in Turkey, saying he feared for his life after his removal by political bodies linked to supporters of the Tripoli-based government headed by Abdul Hamid Dabaiba.

The central bank oversees the internal distribution of the largest oil wealth in Africa, and has $80bn of foreign exchange reserves. Dabaiba believed Kabir had become too critical of his government’s corruption-fuelled spending, and had switched sides by channelling money to theeast. But Kabir pointed out government expenditures for 2024 were planned to be 37.5% higher than revenues.

With eastern Libya demanding Kabir’s return and decrying his ousting as unconstitutional, the impasse has led to the closure of many oilfields and many of the central bank’s foreign exchange transactions to be frozen by global banks which under US pressure will not support Kabir’s removal.

The central bank has been one of the few functioning Libyan institutions, and western powers have opposed Kabir’s sacking, regarding him as a flawed but rare source of stability.

In a sign of the importance of Libya to Turkey’s future relations with Egypt, the Turkish head of intelligence, Ibrahim Kalin, flew to Tripoli immediately after the Erdoğan-Sisi summit.

Kalin appears to be trying to persuade Dabaiba to let Kabir back into office on an interim basis, or to find a new consensus board to head the bank.

Alia Brahimi, a journalist and specialist in politics of the Middle East and north Africa, says in a forthcoming piece in Atlantic Council that the disputes inside Libya are between elite families over economic resources and this changes the equation for Turkey or at least makes the calculations different to 2019.

She also points to growing financial partnership between Turkish and Libyan businesses in the country’s east, for instance the construction of the largest steel and iron production plant in the world in Benghazi, means it is not predestined that Turkey would once more extend carte blanche military support to the government in Tripoli.

At the same time western Libya has given Turkish troops near-total immunity in a memorandum of understanding, so it would be a large sacrifice to abandon Dabaiba’s quest to control the central bank

The UN and western ambassadors have called for the Kabir crisis to be resolved through consensus, probably involving his interim return.

One observer said: “The international community is back in full crisis mode about Libya because they realise such are its economic problems it could collapse very quickly, and turn into another failed state on the Med. The security implications in terms of migration and instability matter. But there is still no long-term plan to resolve the country’s divisions and the problem is that the corrupt financial interests of the elite have for years hollowed out Libya”.

The former partner of Ugandan athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, who had been accused of killing her by dousing her in petrol and setting her on fire, has died from burns sustained during the attack, the Kenyan hospital where he was being treated said on Tuesday.

Cheptegei, 33, who competed in the marathon at the Paris Olympics, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in the 1 September attack and died four days later.

Her former boyfriend, Dickson Ndiema Marangach, died at 7.50pm local time on Monday, said Daniel Lang’at, a spokesperson at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret in western Kenya, where Cheptegei was also treated and died. “He died from his injuries, the burns he sustained,” Lang’at told Reuters.

Cheptegei, who finished 44th in Paris, is the third elite sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Her death has put the spotlight on domestic violence in the East African country, particularly within its running community.

Rights groups say female athletes in Kenya are at a high risk of exploitation and violence at the hands of men drawn to their prize money, which far exceeds local incomes.

Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk. The 2022 survey found that 41% of married women had faced violence.

Globally, a woman is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, according to a 2023 UN Women study.

Tens of thousands of artefacts have been looted from a Sudanese museum regarded as one of the most important in Africa, an official at the institution has said.

The official at the National Museum in Khartoum said satellite images taken last year showed trucks loaded with artefacts leaving the museum and heading for Sudan’s borders, including that with South Sudan.

The official, who asked to remain anonymous, did not attribute blame for the looting. Earlier this month, Sudan’s national broadcaster reported that the museum had been targeted by “a large-scale looting and smuggling operation”.

The museum is located in an area controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group battling the regular army in Sudan’s civil war. The RSF has been approached for comment. It has previously denied that its fighters have looted institutions.

The National Museum is regarded by experts as one of the most important such institutions in Africa. Its collection of more than 100,000 items includes embalmed mummies dating from 2,500BC, making them among the oldest and archaeologically most important in the world, as well as statues, pottery and ancient murals, with artefacts from the stone age through to the Christian and Islamic eras.

Looting has also been reported at two other major Sudanese museums: Khalifa House in the city of Omdurman and the Nyala museum in South Darfur state.

“When we learned about the looting, we didn’t sleep for three or four days,” the National Museum official said. “These artefacts are our identity, the identity of the Sudanese people. Can you imagine what it feels like to lose your identity? You lose your existence in this world.”

The official said that attempts were being made to talk to regional governments about returning the works. “Under normal circumstances it’s not even allowed to move the artefacts from one place to another inside the museum unless police are present,” they said.

Dr Julien Cooper, an archaeologist with Macquarie University in Sydney, told Australia’s ABC radio: “The museum has a huge collection of artefacts from across history, time and culture. It’s something we should really treasure.

“No one is really sure about the objects that have gone missing,” added Cooper, an egyptologist and Sudan specialist who has spent time at the museum. “Because the museum has been in the fog of war since the conflict started, it’s been very difficult to get reports on what’s been happening inside.”

In June last year a video clip circulated on social media that appeared to show fighters from the RSF entering the bioarchaeology lab of the National Museum and opening storage containers containing mummies and other remains. The RSF have denied anything was stolen.

Staff had been forced to abandon the site shortly after fighting erupted between the RSF and the army in April last year. Thousands of people have been killed since the war began, 8 million have been displaced internally, and a further 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries.

Within a week of being inaugurated in April as Senegal’s youngest president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye named his political mentor, Ousmane Sonko, as prime minister and announced his 25 cabinet appointments.

Faye had swept to power on a leftist, anti-establishment and pan-African agenda promising radical reform, and said in his victory speech that his administration would focus on national reconciliation, easing the cost of living crisis and fighting corruption.

His first-round victory in March over Amadou Ba, who represented the ruling administration, was all the more remarkable because Faye and Sonko had been released from prison only 10 days before the vote, under an amnesty announced by the previous president, Macky Sall.

Sall, in power for 12 years, had tried to delay the vote, and left office with his country facing widespread poverty and almost a third of Senegal’s youth unemployed.

“We fought body and soul to protect [Sonko] because the project represents hope for the young Senegalese,” said Moustapha Sano, a 28-year-old law and political science student at Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Dakar, who helped Sonko’s Patriots of Senegal (Pastef) party organise campus protests against the Sall administration when it started jailing opposition members.

Six months on, however, the promises of far-reaching change have not come to fruition. Faye and Sonko blame parliament, where Sall’s supporters still hold a majority won in 2022.

Sonko has refused to present his policy agenda – known as the general policy declaration (GPD) – to parliament, on the grounds that parliament does not recognise the role of prime minister. Sall scrapped the position in 2019 and reinstated it in 2022, but MPs did not apply the reinstatement to parliamentary regulations until late August.

Aminata Touré, a former prime minister and ex-ally of Sall who joined the opposition camp three years ago, says the parliament no longer has legitimacy. “We have to align the legitimacy of 24 March when President Faye won by 54%, with the representation of the parliament,” she said.

Other parties in parliament think Sonko is stalling until he can gain parliamentary control.

“[He] wants to impose his law,” said Thierno Alassane Sall, the party leader of La République des Valeurs. “He forgets that he was not elected by anyone and he only draws his legitimacy … from the president of the republic who appointed him.”

On 4 September, Sonko said Faye would dissolve the opposition-dominated parliament in the coming days, which would pave the way for elections.

Senegal’s parliament cannot be dissolved by the president until it has sat for two years. According to media reports, this threshold will be reached on 12 September.

Faye has been active on the diplomatic front since taking office, mediating between the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and three countries – Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – whose military rulers split from the bloc in January to form the Association of Sahel States.

“The whole idea is to build a stronger Africa” said Touré, who urged the association to be “open-minded” to reconciliatory talks. “In a family, people have differences, but we remain family and I believe President [Faye] will succeed in rebuilding that family.”

The government’s critics say Faye’s diplomacy is a distraction from the domestic scene, where debt is more than 72% of its GDP, and youth unemployment remains high.

Accusations of cronyism, which dogged the Sall administration, have resurfaced. Almost half of Faye’s cabinet appointments – generally picked on the basis of merit, not party affiliation – are Pastef members or people linked to the party. Hopes of more gender equality have also been dashed: only 46 of the 300 appointments made by the new administration are women.

In July, as Faye marked 100 days in office, the United in Hope coalition led by Sall’s Alliance pour la République party criticised the president’s tenure for having “a lack of direction” and said Senegal had been on pause since the election. A month later, privately owned news outlets staged a one-day nationwide blackout to protest against the state freezing the bank accounts of media companies and seizing their equipment over alleged non-payment of taxes.

On the campaign trail, Faye vowed to achieve sovereignty, including by abandoning the West African CFA franc, the currency used by eight states in West Africa. He also promised to review Senegal’s relationship with its former colonial master, France, which is often thought to receive preferential treatment. But his first visit outside the continent was to Emmanuel Macron, the French president. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-leaning French opposition leader, has also visited Sonko in Dakar.

“Once you are in a position of responsibility, whether you are entrusted with the reins of power or the reins of a country, you have a much more complex view of things,” said Boubacar Ba, associate professor of public law at UCAD. “So this difference in discourse is perfectly understandable … When you’re president, you have to take a lot of things into account, because today your word is binding on the credibility of the state.”

In April, Faye pledged to review deals with foreign partners in the extractive sector. Two months later, a decade after oil and gas was discovered off the Senegalese coast, production began at the country’s first offshore oil project, a partnership with Australian firm. It is uncertain what the terms of the deal are.

For Touré, the change in rhetoric is not evidence of the new leader backtracking on his promises.

“The point is, whoever we are partnering with, we’re going to make sure that it’s on a win-win situation. The new generation of leaders made it very clear that they want [a] more balanced relationship and that’s what the people of Africa have been longing for.”

Indeed, many youths like Sano who rooted for Pastef are optimistic that the party can still change the country’s fortunes.

“We want all young Senegalese to be able to benefit from Senegal’s natural resources … because we don’t want to continue to see so many thousands of young people perishing in the Atlantic Ocean, perishing in the Sahara desert,” he said, referring to the thousands of young people who have left for Europe in recent years.

A fuel tanker has collided head on with another truck in Nigeria, causing an explosion that killed at least 48 people, the country’s emergency response agency has said.

The tanker was also carrying cattle in the Agaie area in north-central Niger state, at least 50 of which were burned alive, Abdullahi Baba-Arab, director-general of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, said. He added that search and rescue operations were under way at the scene of the accident.

Baba-Arab said initially that 30 bodies were found, but in a later statement said an additional 18 bodies of victims who were burned to death in the collision were found. He said the dead had been given a mass burial.

Mohammed Bago, the governor of Niger state, said residents of the affected area should remain calm and asked road users to “always be cautious and abide by road traffic regulations to safeguard lives and property”.

In the absence of an efficient railway system to transport cargo, fatal truck accidents are common along most of the major roads in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.

In 2020 alone, there were 1,531 gasoline tanker crashes, resulting in 535 fatalities and 1,142 injuries, according to Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Corps.

Kenyan police stepped up their investigation on Saturday into a fire at a boarding school that killed 17 boys, as the president announced three days of national mourning.

Detectives said DNA testing was due to begin to identify the remains of the children who died in the blaze.

Vice-president Rigathi Gachagua said on Friday that 70 youngsters were still unaccounted for after the fire broke out at Hillside Endarasha academy in Nyeri county, central Kenya, at about midnight on Thursday.

The flames engulfed a dormitory at the primary school, where more than 150 boys were sleeping.

The cause of the inferno is not yet known, but homicide investigators and forensic experts were at the school on Saturday, while media were barred from the site.

The bodies of victims, which police had said were burnt beyond recognition, were still in the dormitory, now a blackened shell with its corrugated iron roof completely collapsed.

Kenya’s chief homicide detective, Martin Nyuguto, said at the scene: “Today we want to begin the process of DNA testing.”

President William Ruto declared three days of national mourning starting from Monday to honour the victims of what he described as an “unfathomable tragedy”. He said on Friday that 17 children had lost their lives, while 14 had sustained injuries and were being treated in hospital.

“I pledge that the difficult questions that have been asked such as how this tragedy occurred and why the response was not timely will be answered; fully, frankly, and without fear or favour. All relevant persons and bodies will be held to account,” Ruto said in a statement.

Kenya’s National Gender and Equality Commission said initial reports indicated that the dorm was “overcrowded, in violation of safety standards”.

The blaze has highlighted the issue of school safety in Kenya, after numerous similar disasters over the years.

In a statement from the Vatican on Saturday, Pope Francis said he was “deeply saddened” at the loss of young life and expressed his “spiritual closeness to all who are suffering the effects of this calamity, especially the injured and the families who grieve”.

On Friday, tensions were running high among families gathered at the school, anxious for news of their missing children.

Many broke down after officials took them to see the bodies in the destroyed dorm. “Please look for my kid. He can’t be dead. I want my child,” one woman cried.

The Kenya Red Cross said it was on the ground assisting a multiagency response team and providing psychosocial support to traumatised pupils and families.

Muchai Kihara, 56, said he was lucky to find his 12-year-old son Stephen Gachingi alive after rushing to the school at about 1am on Friday. Kihara said: “I cannot begin to imagine what he went through. I am happy he is alive but he had some injuries at the back of his head and the smoke had affected his eyes.”

“I just want him to be counselled now to see if his life will return to normal,” Kihara added, as he sat with his son on a bench beside a white Red Cross tent where families are being counselled.

There have been many school fires in Kenya and across east Africa in recent years.

In 2016, nine students were killed by a fire at a girls’ high school in the sprawling slum neighbourhood of Kibera in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

In 2001, 67 pupils were killed in an arson attack on their dormitory at a secondary school in the town of Machakos to the south-east of Nairobi. Two pupils were charged with murder, and the headteacher and deputy of the school were convicted of negligence.

In 1994, 40 schoolchildren were burned alive and 47 injured in a fire that tore through a girls’ school in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania.

In 2022, a blaze ravaged a school for the blind in eastern Uganda. Eleven pupils died after they were trapped inside their shared bedroom because the building had been burglar-proofed, government ministers said at the time.

A fire at a primary boarding school in central Kenya has killed 17 students, a police spokesperson said.

President William Ruto said he had asked authorities to investigate and hold those responsible to account.

More rescuers were on their way to the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri, the spokesperson, Resila Onyango, said in a broadcast on Kenya’s Hot 96 FM radio, and authorities would provide details later.

“We have lost 17 pupils in the fire incident while 14 are injured,” Onyango told Reuters by telephone. “Our team is at the scene at the moment.“

The fire had burned the students beyond recognition, Citizen Television said earlier.

“I instruct relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate this horrific incident. Those responsible will be held to account,” Ruto posted on X.

Authorities have cordoned off the school, Kenya Red Cross said.

There have been a series of school fires in Kenya in recent years, many of which have turned out to be arson. Nine students were killed in September 2017 in a fire at a school in the capital, Nairobi, which the government attributed to arson.

In 2001, 58 schoolboys were killed in a dormitory fire at Kyanguli secondary school outside Nairobi. In 2012, eight students were killed at a school in Homa Bay County in western Kenya.

Peacekeepers should be deployed to Sudan immediately and an existing international arms embargo should be expanded to protect civilians from “harrowing” rights abuses committed by the warring parties in the country’s civil war, UN experts said on Friday.

Sudan’s army (SAF) and its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces [RSF], have raped and attacked civilians, used torture and made arbitrary arrests, according to a UN-mandated fact-finding mission based on 182 interviews with survivors, relatives and witnesses. The violations “may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity”, its report said.

The independent experts said they had also found evidence of “indiscriminate” airstrikes and shelling against civilian targets including schools, hospitals and facilities for water and electricity supply.

“The gravity of our findings and failure of the warring parties to protect civilians underscores the need for urgent and immediate intervention,” the UN fact-finding mission’s chair, Mohamed Chande Othman, told reporters.

The mission also called for the expansion of an existing UN arms embargo which applies only to the western region of Darfur, where thousands of ethnic killings have been reported.

“It is imperative that an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians be deployed without delay,” Othman said, adding that there were different options including a UN-mandated force or a regional one backed by the African Union.

The latest claims come on top of previous allegations that the RSF and its allies have been responsible for series of massacres and ethnic cleansing in West Darfur and Al Jazirah state leading to the deaths of between 10,000 and 15,000 people.

Mission member Joy Ngozi Ezeilo said unnamed support groups had received reports of more than 400 rapes in the first year of the war, but the real number was probably much higher. “The rare brutality of this war will have a devastating and long-lasting psychological impact on children,” she said.

The fact-finding team said it had tried to contact Sudanese government authorities on multiple occasions as part of its work, but received no answer. It said the RSF had asked to cooperate with the mission, without elaborating.

The Guardian has approached the Sudanese embassy in London for comment.

The report, based on interviews with survivors, witnesses and other sources now in Chad, Kenya and Uganda, emerged after two weeks of inconclusive US-brokered peace efforts in Geneva. The talks were attended by the RSF but not the SAF.

There was minimal progress towards a cessation of hostilities during the talks, thought there was an announcement of a mechanism called Aligned for Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan, which aims to expand access to humanitarian routes.

Observers have been issuing warnings in recent weeks about the deteriorating hunger situation in Sudan.

Maximo Torero, chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization, a UN agency, said on Thursday: “The conflict continues to drive a rapid deterioration of food security, with about 26% more people estimated to face high levels of acute food insecurity during the June to September lead period compared to June last year, reaching 25.6 million people classified in crisis or worse.”

The war began in April last year, pitting the national army led by Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the RSF led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – also known as Hemedti.

The fighting began in the capital, Khartoum, but has since spread to 14 of the country’s 18 states. Thousands of people have been killed, 8 million have been displaced internally, and a further 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

The first donation of mpox vaccines arrived in Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday, but officials say millions more doses will be needed.

The announcement came amid warnings that the geographical spread of the virus, formerly known as monkeypox, was increasing, and swift action was needed across the continent to contain the outbreak.

Almost 100,000 doses of Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine were delivered to the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, as part of a European Union donation programme, with another 100,000 expected on Saturday.

Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the regional health authority, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), emphasised the need to curb the spread of the disease to neighbouring countries.

“The outbreak is really moving [fast],” said Kaseya. “We really need to stop it really quickly.”

Almost 25,000 cases of mpox have been reported across Africa this year, with 5,549 confirmed by testing, and 643 deaths, according to Africa CDC. Cases are up 104% compared with last year.

The DRC still accounts for the majority of cases, but Kaseya said numbers were rising elsewhere. He said he was “really concerned” by a reported case of mpox in a seven-year-old child in Guinea, which potentially represents the first case of the new clade Ib variant detected in west Africa. Sequencing tests are still in progress.

Clade Ib is a mutated form of the virus, newly detected in eastern DRC, which appears to be spreading via close contact between people and driving the large jump in case numbers.

The outbreak, which has spread to nearby countries, has been declared a public health emergency by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and African health officials. A response plan is estimated to require almost $600m (£455m) over the next six months, officials said.

About 380,000 doses of mpox vaccines have been pledged by western partners including the EU and US, according to Africa CDC. However, they said 3m doses would be needed to end outbreaks of the virus in the country.

Vaccination programmes are expected to focus on contacts of suspected cases as well as healthcare and frontline workers in areas with active transmission.

However, the programme is unlikely to get under way until October at the earliest, with local healthcare and logistical workers still being trained on how to store and administer the vaccine. A large public information campaign is also being rolled out to improve awareness of mpox and tackle vaccine hesitancy.

Most cases in the DRC are among children. Regulators are assessing information submitted by Bavarian Nordic that could see the vaccine authorised for 12 to 17-year-olds by the end of the month, but approval for younger children will take longer.

There are concerns about the affordability of vaccines for a wider programme, with the WHO putting the cost at $50 to $75 a dose.

“Most vaccines cost around £1 or less,” said Dr Andrew Hill, of Liverpool University. “If there are large orders for millions of vaccine doses for Africa, Bavarian Nordic should lower their prices. Otherwise, they should allow a generic company to mass produce their vaccine for a low price.”

A Bavarian Nordic spokesperson said: “While we are proud that our mpox vaccine has arrived to help people in Africa, it remains a concern for Bavarian Nordic that artificial prices are being mentioned, as there exists no published dose price range. And we have not started to discuss prices with relevant organisations.”

The company had previously suggested it would be open to a tiered pricing model, in which countries with fewer resources or those able to place larger, longer-term orders paid less.

Within the DRC, clade Ib was reported in Kinshasa for the first time this week. In a case report about one patient, Dr Eddy Lusamaki, of the DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research, wrote that it suggested the variant was spreading across the country.

Lusamaki said: “Its presence in Kinshasa, the capital city, with multiple international connections by air traffic and multiple exchanges with Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, illustrated the need for improved surveillance strategies to control the spread of the disease.”

Cases of the clade Ib variant were also reported in Thailand and Sweden last month.

A fire at a primary boarding school in central Kenya has killed 17 students, a police spokesperson said.

President William Ruto said he had asked authorities to investigate and hold those responsible to account.

More rescuers were on their way to the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri, the spokesperson, Resila Onyango, said in a broadcast on Kenya’s Hot 96 FM radio, and authorities would provide details later.

“We have lost 17 pupils in the fire incident while 14 are injured,” Onyango told Reuters by telephone. “Our team is at the scene at the moment.“

The fire had burned the students beyond recognition, Citizen Television said earlier.

“I instruct relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate this horrific incident. Those responsible will be held to account,” Ruto posted on X.

Authorities have cordoned off the school, Kenya Red Cross said.

There have been a series of school fires in Kenya in recent years, many of which have turned out to be arson. Nine students were killed in September 2017 in a fire at a school in the capital, Nairobi, which the government attributed to arson.

In 2001, 58 schoolboys were killed in a dormitory fire at Kyanguli secondary school outside Nairobi. In 2012, eight students were killed at a school in Homa Bay County in western Kenya.

A fire at a primary boarding school in central Kenya has killed 17 students, a police spokesperson said.

President William Ruto said he had asked authorities to investigate and hold those responsible to account.

More rescuers were on their way to the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri, the spokesperson, Resila Onyango, said in a broadcast on Kenya’s Hot 96 FM radio, and authorities would provide details later.

“We have lost 17 pupils in the fire incident while 14 are injured,” Onyango told Reuters by telephone. “Our team is at the scene at the moment.“

The fire had burned the students beyond recognition, Citizen Television said earlier.

“I instruct relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate this horrific incident. Those responsible will be held to account,” Ruto posted on X.

Authorities have cordoned off the school, Kenya Red Cross said.

There have been a series of school fires in Kenya in recent years, many of which have turned out to be arson. Nine students were killed in September 2017 in a fire at a school in the capital, Nairobi, which the government attributed to arson.

In 2001, 58 schoolboys were killed in a dormitory fire at Kyanguli secondary school outside Nairobi. In 2012, eight students were killed at a school in Homa Bay County in western Kenya.

A fire at a primary boarding school in central Kenya has killed 17 students, a police spokesperson said.

President William Ruto said he had asked authorities to investigate and hold those responsible to account.

More rescuers were on their way to the Hillside Endarasha Academy in Nyeri, the spokesperson, Resila Onyango, said in a broadcast on Kenya’s Hot 96 FM radio, and authorities would provide details later.

“We have lost 17 pupils in the fire incident while 14 are injured,” Onyango told Reuters by telephone. “Our team is at the scene at the moment.“

The fire had burned the students beyond recognition, Citizen Television said earlier.

“I instruct relevant authorities to thoroughly investigate this horrific incident. Those responsible will be held to account,” Ruto posted on X.

Authorities have cordoned off the school, Kenya Red Cross said.

There have been a series of school fires in Kenya in recent years, many of which have turned out to be arson. Nine students were killed in September 2017 in a fire at a school in the capital, Nairobi, which the government attributed to arson.

In 2001, 58 schoolboys were killed in a dormitory fire at Kyanguli secondary school outside Nairobi. In 2012, eight students were killed at a school in Homa Bay County in western Kenya.