World leaders should be ashamed of their neglect of people whose lives were “hanging by a thread” at a time of surging violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the international charity leader Jan Egeland has said.

In a stinging attack on aid cuts and the “nationalistic winds” blowing across Europe and the US, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s head told the Guardian how people were living out in the open, in overcrowded, unsanitary displacement encampments around the city of Goma, where 1.2 million people have had to flee from their homes as the M23 rebels advanced through the DRC’s North and South Kivu provinces.

“The level of global neglect experienced by civilians in eastern DRC should shame world leaders,” he said, adding that European countries and others had ignored the suffering for years.

“We hope that a Europe and the US, which is very self-centred, where nationalistic winds are blowing, where aid is being cut and international solidarity is not what it was, will open their eyes to the immense suffering that is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” said Egeland, who has just returned from a visit to the area.

“[I saw] overflowing latrines, 25 people sleeping in a classroom where they have to drag their few belongings out every morning because the classroom is used for school, then every afternoon return to the classroom to sleep overnight. It’s really subhuman,” he said.

Eastern DRC has long suffered from violence, and the camps in Goma, capital of North Kivu province, host people who have been displaced for years.

However, conditions have deteriorated since the M23 rebellion launched in 2022. The Rwandan-backed group has managed to seize large parts of eastern DRC, including Goma and other key towns, since January.

Egeland said the humanitarian situation had been complicated by M23 forcing displaced people to leave the camps, often giving them only 72 hours to move on. Many people had returned to their homes, where there was relative safety now that the M23 had taken control.

He warned, however, that a political settlement was needed now as well as aid, especially in the form of cash, to ensure displaced people could buy food and rebuild their homes and livelihoods in places devastated by years of conflict.

Egeland said charities were struggling because they often had still not been paid for work done last year because of President Donald Trump’s freezing of US aid spending in January, and even projects that had been approved by Washington had not yet received money.

He said that while support from Norway, which had fast-tracked pre-existing pledges, had allowed the NRC to continue working, other humanitarian organisations were struggling.

“At a time of enormous needs – because of the recent increase in fighting – and of opportunity [to help] the many who can return, the money is not coming in,” he said. “It means people are not helped, they linger in camps with worsening conditions, that children cannot go to school.”

The guitarist and singer Amadou Bagayoko of the Malian music duo Amadou & Mariam has died aged 70 after an illness, his family said, paying tribute to the Grammy-nominated blind musician.

Amadou and his wife, Mariam Doumbia, formed a group whose blend of traditional Malian music with rock guitars and western blues sold millions of albums across the world.

Among other achievements the couple, who met at the institute for the young blind in the Malian capital, Bamako, composed the official song for the 2006 football World Cup in Germany and played at the closing ceremony concert for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

“He had been ill for a while,” Amadou’s son-in-law Youssouf Fadiga told Agence-France Presse.

Their France-based manager, Yannick Tardy, who had spoken to Mariam by phone, said Amadou had been taken to a clinic after feeling fatigue, and had died later that day.

Confirming the musician’s death to AFP, the Malian culture minister, Mamou Daffé, said he felt “dismay” at the loss.

After meeting in 1976, when Amadou was 21 and Mariam 18, the pair discovered they had similar tastes in music.

They began touring together from the 1980s, mixing traditional west African instruments such as the kora and balafon with the Pink Floyd and James Brown records from their youth.

They sang songs to raise awareness of the problems facing their peers living with blindness and disabilities.

A few decades later their 2004 album, Dimanche à Bamako (Sunday in Bamako), brought them worldwide success backed up by the title track.

Amadou and Mariam became one of Africa’s best-selling pairs, playing alongside the likes of Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz and the Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour – a childhood idol.

They played at festivals including Glastonbury, shared bills with Coldplay, U2 and Stevie Wonder and played for Barack Obama at the concert marking the US president’s Nobel Peace prize award.

“There were many musicians, many artists there. And Barack Obama came to meet us,” Amadou told AFP in a 2024 interview.

“We talked a bit. Barack Obama told us that he liked our music. Malian music, too. We were very, very happy,” Mariam added.

Besides a Grammy nomination in 2010, Amadou & Mariam won prizes at the BBC radio awards and France’s Victoires de la Musique.

Amadou Bagayoko is survived by three children.

The day after Donald Trump announced sweeping global tariffs, Lesotho’s garment workers feared for their jobs.

Last year, Lesotho sent about 20% of its $1.1bn (£845m) of exports to the US, most of it clothing under a continent-wide trade agreement meant to help African countries’ development via tariff-free exports, as well as diamonds.

Now, all that is at risk, after the US president imposed a 50% tariff on the impoverished landlocked country, which he claimed last month “nobody had ever heard of”.

Makhotso Moeti moved to Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, from the rural centre of the tiny mountainous kingdom entirely surrounded by South Africa. “Factory work is the only job I’ve known for many years,” said Moeti, who attaches labels to Gap clothing. “If the factories shut down, I won’t have many options left. I’ll be forced to return home to the very poverty I thought I had escaped when I moved to the city.”

On Wednesday, Trump unveiled what he claimed were “reciprocal” tariffs, overturning decades of global trade policy.

The tariff rates, which are due to come into force on 9 April, range from 10% to 50% and were calculated with what economists labelled an “idiotic” formula, penalising countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US relative to their imports from the US.

Dr Ratjomose Machema, a lecturer in economics at the National University of Lesotho, said: “I don’t understand how this is a reciprocal tariff because we really don’t charge that much in tariffs.”

Lesotho, which has a population of 2.3 million, was hit with the highest rate. In Africa, it was followed by Madagascar, a vanilla exporter, with a tariff of 47%; Botswana, a diamond producer, on 37%; oil-rich Angola with 32%; and the continent’s most industrialised economy, South Africa, on 30%.

Like the hard-hit, south-east Asian economies, the poor majority in these countries cannot afford expensive American products. In recent decades, China has overtaken western countries to become the largest trading partner of most African countries.

According to the African Growth and Opportunities Act (Agoa) US data portal, Lesotho exported $237m of goods last year to the US and imported $2.8m, mostly clothing and diamonds. Agoa, which has allowed tariff-free access to the US market for thousands of product types since 2000, created a thriving garment industry, accounting for about 20% of GDP.

There are about 30,000 garment workers in Lesotho, mostly women, with 12,000 making clothes for US brands including Levi’s, Calvin Klein and Walmart in Chinese- and Taiwanese-owned factories. While most of the jobs pay the monthly minimum wage of $146-$163, they are still highly sought after in the poor, largely informal economy.

In Madagascar, which has a population of about 32 million, Agoa has also nurtured a significant garment sector, which employs about 180,000 people in a country where GDP per head is just $575. In 2024, the island nation exported $733m of goods to the US, with clothing the top export, followed by vanilla.

Ketakandriana Rafitoson, a political science researcher at the Catholic University of Madagascar, said: “The textile and apparel sector is really a cornerstone of Madagascar’s economy … [Tariffs] will have a drastic effect on the country.”

The future of Agoa, which will expire in September if it isn’t renewed by the US Congress, was already looking precarious before Trump’s announcement.

Lesotho’s trade minister, Mokhethi Shelile, said officials, who had been preparing to travel to the US to ask for an Agoa extension, would argue that the tariff calculations didn’t include digital services from US companies such as Android and Microsoft.

He added: “That being said, we recognise that we cannot rely solely on the American market.”

A fact sheet published by the White House to accompany Trump’s tariff announcement said: “Today’s action simply asks other countries to treat us like we treat them. It’s the golden rule for our golden age.”

In Lesotho, Nthabiseng Khalele, a garment worker sheltering from the rain after a long day in the factory, said: “My hope and wish is that our prime minister could somehow reach out to President Trump and ask him to at least show some compassion for Lesotho. If we lose our jobs here, I’m almost certain that many of us will end up sleeping on empty stomachs.”

Meta faces a $2.4bn (£1.8bn) lawsuit accusing the Facebook owner of inflaming violence in Ethiopia after the Kenyan high court said a legal case against the US tech group could go ahead.

The case brought by two Ethiopian nationals calls on Facebook to alter its algorithm to stop promoting hateful material and incitement to violence, as well as hiring more content moderators in Africa. It is also seeking a $2.4bn “restitution fund” for victims of hate and violence incited on Facebook.

One of the claimants is the son of Prof Meareg Amare Abrha, who was murdered at his home in Ethiopia after his address and threatening posts were published on Facebook in 2021 during a civil war in the country. Another claimant is Fisseha Tekle, a former researcher at Amnesty International who published reports on violence committed during the conflict in Tigray in northern Ethiopia and received death threats on Facebook.

Meta has argued that courts in Kenya, where Facebook’s Ethiopia moderators were based at the time, did not have jurisdiction over the case. The Kenyan high court in Nairobi ruled on Thursday that the case fell within the jurisdiction of the country’s courts.

Abrham Meareg, the son of Meareg, said: “I am grateful for the court’s decision today. It is disgraceful that Meta would argue that they should not be subject to the rule of law in Kenya. African lives matter.”

Tekle said he cannot return home to Ethiopia because of Meta’s failure to make Facebook safe. “Meta cannot undo the damage it has done, but it can radically change how it moderates dangerous content across all its platforms to make sure no one else has to go through what I have,” he said. “I look forward to this matter now being heard by the court in full.”

The case, supported by non-profit organisations including Foxglove and Amnesty International, also demands a formal apology from Meta for the murder of Meareg. The Katiba Institute, a Kenya-based NGO focusing on the Kenyan constitution, is the third claimant in the case.

In 2022 an analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Observer found that Facebook was letting users post content inciting violence through hate and misinformation, despite being aware that it was fuelling tensions in Tigray.

Meta rejected the claims at the time, saying it had “invested in safety and security measures” to tackle hate and inflammatory language along with “aggressive steps to stop the spread of misinformation” in Ethiopia.

In January the company said it was removing factcheckers and “dramatically” reducing the amount of censorship on the platform, although it would continue to tackle illegal and high severity violations.

Meta said it did not comment on ongoing legal matters.

The World Bank is embarking on a multimillion-dollar programme in response to alleged human rights abuses against Tanzanian herders during a flagship tourism project it funded for seven years.

Allegations made by pastoralist communities living in and around Ruaha national park include violent evictions, sexual assaults, killings, forced disappearances and large-scale cattle seizures from herders committed by rangers working for the Tanzanian national park authority (Tanapa).

The pastoralists say most of the incidents took place after the bank approved $150m (£116m) for the Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (Regrow) project September in 2017, aimed at developing tourism in four protected areas in southern Tanzania in a bid to take pressure off heavily touristed northern areas such as Ngorongoro and the Serengeti.

In 2023, two individuals wrote to the bank accusing some Tanapa employees of “extreme cruelty” during cattle seizures and having engaged in “extrajudicial killings” and the “disappearance” of community members.

The Oakland Institute, a US-based thinktank that is advising the communities, and which alerted the World Bank to abuses in April 2023, says Ruaha doubled in size from 1m to more than 2m hectares (2.5m to 5m acres) during the project’s lifetime – a claim the bank denies. It says the expansion took place a decade earlier. Oakland claims 84,000 people from at least 28 villages were affected by the expansion plan.

This week, the bank published a 70-page report following its own investigation, which found “critical failures in the planning and supervision of this project and that these have resulted in serious harm”. The report, published on 2 April, notes that “the project should have recognised that enhancing Tanapa’s capacity to manage the park could potentially increase the likelihood of conflict with communities trying to access the park.”

Anna Bjerde, World Bank managing director of operations, said, “We regret that the Regrow project preparation and supervision did not sufficiently account for project risks, resulting in inadequate mitigation measures to address adverse impacts. This oversight led to the bank overlooking critical information during implementation.”

The report includes recommendations aimed at redressing harms done and details a $2.8m project that will support alternative livelihoods for communities inside and around the park. It will also help fund a Tanzanian NGO that provides legal advice to victims of crime who want to pursue justice through the courts.

A second, much bigger project, understood to be worth $110, will fund alternative livelihoods across the entire country, including Ruaha.

The total investment, thought to be the largest amount the bank has ever allocated to addressing breaches of its policies, is a reflection of the serious nature of the allegations.

The bank had already suspended Regrow funding in April 2024 after its own investigation found the Tanzanian government had violated the bank’s resettlement policy and failed to create a system to report violent incidents or claim redress. The project was cancelled altogether in November 2024. A spokesperson said the bank “remains deeply concerned about the serious nature of the reports of incidents of violence and continues to focus on the wellbeing of affected communities”.

By the time the project was suspended the bank had already disbursed $125m of the $150m allocated to Regrow.

The Oakland Institute estimates that economic damages for farmers and pastoralists affected by livelihood restrictions, run into tens of millions of dollars.

Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, said the “scathing” investigation “confirmed the bank’s grave wrongdoing which devastated the lives of communities. Pastoralists and farms who refused to be silenced amid widespread government repression, are now vindicated.”

She added that the bank’s response was “beyond shameful”.

“Suggesting that tens of thousands of people forced out of their land can survive with ‘alternative livelihoods’ such as clean cooking and microfinance is a slap in the face of the victims.”

Inspection panel chair Ibrahim Pam said critical lessons from the Regrow case will be applied to all conservation projects that require resettlement and restrict access to parks, especially those implemented by a law enforcement agency.

Regrow was given the go ahead in 2017. The Oakland Institute described its cancellation by the government in 2024 as a landmark victory, but said communities “remain under siege – still facing evictions, crippling livelihood restrictions and human rights abuses”.

In one village near the southern border of Ruaha, the brother of a young man who was killed three years ago while herding cattle in an area adjacent to the park, said: “It feels like it was yesterday. He had a wife, a family. Now the wife has to look after the child by herself.” He did not want to give his name for fear of reprisal.

Another community member whose husband was allegedly killed by Tanapa staff said: “I feel bad whenever I remember what happened to my husband. We used to talk often. We were friends. I was pregnant with his child when he died. He never saw his daughter. Now I just live in fear of these [Tanapa-employed] people.”

The Oakland Institute said the affected communities reject the bank’s recommendations, and have delivered a list of demands that includes “reverting park boundaries to the 1998 borders they accepted, reparations for livelihood restrictions, the resumption of suspended basic services, and justice for victims of ranger abuse and violence.

“Villagers are determined to continue the struggle for their rights to land and life until the bank finally takes responsibility and remedies the harms it caused.”

The bank has said it has no authority to pay compensation directly.

Wildlife-based tourism is a major component of Tanzania’s economy, contributing more than one quarter of the country’s foreign exchange earnings in 2019. The bank has said any future community resettlement will be the government’s decision.

Developing nations in south-east Asia, including war-torn and earthquake-hit Myanmar, and several African nations are among the trading partners facing the highest tariffs set by Donald Trump.

Upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war, the US president announced a raft of tariffs on Wednesday that he said were designed to stop the US economy from being “cheated”.

“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” said Trump on Wednesday. “It’s our declaration of economic independence.”

He hailed the moment as “liberation day”, but the tariffs are likely to be met with loud protests from some of the world’s weakest economies. One expert said Trump was likely to be targeting countries that receive investment from China, regardless of the situation in that country. Chinese manufacturers have previously relocated to countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia not only due to lower operating costs, but also to avoid tariffs.

The tariffs comes as many countries in south-east Asia are already grappling with the fallout from the cuts to USAid, which provides humanitarian assistance to a region vulnerable to natural disasters and support for pro-democracy activists battling repressive regimes.

Cambodia, a developing economy where 17.8% of the population live below the poverty line, according to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), is the worst-hit country in the region with a tariff rate of 49%. More than half of the country’s factories are reportedly Chinese-owned, with the countries exports dominated by garments and footwear.

In second place is the landlocked south-east Asian nation of Laos, a country heavily bombed by the US during the cold war, with 48%. According to the ADB, Laos has a poverty rate of 18.3%.

Not far behind is Vietnam with 46% and Myanmar, a nation reeling from a devastating earthquake on Friday, and years of civil war following a 2021 military coup, with 44%.

Indonesia, the biggest economy in south-east Asia, faces with a 32% tariff rate, while Thailand, the second-largest, has been hit with a rate of 36%.

Major US rival and trading partner China has been hit with a 34% reciprocal tariff, on top of the 20% levy already imposed.

Dr Siwage Dharma Negara, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said the tariffs on south-east Asian nations were really intended to hurt China.

“The administration thinks that by targeting these countries they can target Chinese investment in countries like Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Indonesia. By targeting their products maybe it will affect Chinese exports and the economy,” he said.

“The real target is China but the real impact on those countries will be quite significant because this investment creates jobs and export revenue.”

Tariffs on countries such as Indonesia, he said, would be counterproductive for the US, and the detail of how they would be applied remained unclear.

“Some garments and footwear [companies], some are American brands like Nike, or Adidas, US companies that have factories in Indonesia. Will they face the same tariffs as well?” he said.

Stephen Olson, a former US trade negotiator, said countries in south-east Asia would be forced to reconsider their relationships with Washington. “A closer tilt towards China could be the result. It’s hard to have constructive, productive relations with a country that has just dropped a ton of bricks on your head,” said Olson, a visiting senior fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.

“The world’s largest importer has now essentially hung a sign on its border saying: closed for business’,” he added. “We are now faced with two plausible scenarios: Either the impacted trade partners hold firm and retaliate in the hope that Trump will be forced to back down, or they look to cut deals with Trump in order to avoid the tariffs. It is unlikely that either scenario will end well.”

Other nations among the hardest hit are several nations in Africa, including Lesotho – a country that Trump claimed “nobody has ever heard of” – with 50%, Madagascar with 47% and Botswana with 37%. Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom surrounded by South Africa, has the second-highest level of HIV infection of the world, with almost one in four adults HIV-positive.

In south Asia, Sri Lanka is facing a 44% tariff. In Europe, Serbia faces a 37% rate.

In addition to the reciprocal tariffs on a few dozen countries, Trump will impose a 10% universal tariff on all imported goods. That tariff will go into effect on 5 April, while the reciprocal tariffs will begin on 9 April.

The US president has justified the changes by saying they are retribution for countries that have long “cheated” America, and the levies will bring jobs back to the US.

But economists have warned the sweeping changes will raise costs, threaten jobs, slow growth and isolate the US from a system of global trade it pioneered, and furthered over several decades.

“This is how you sabotage the world’s economic engine while claiming to supercharge it,” said Nigel Green, the CEO of global financial advisory deVere Group.

“The reality is stark: these tariffs will push prices higher on thousands of everyday goods – from phones to food – and that will fuel inflation at a time when it is already uncomfortably persistent.”

Donald Trump has signed off the UK’s handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, Downing Street has indicated, paving the way for the UK to cede sovereignty over its last African colony after a six-month standoff.

Under the terms of the deal, the UK will give up control of the Chagos archipelago while paying to maintain control of a joint US-UK military base on the largest island, Diego Garcia, under a 99-year lease.

The agreement came under fire from senior Republicans in the US last year, and more recently some inside the UK government who questioned why the UK was spending billions on it amid cost pressures.

The prime minister’s spokesperson said on Tuesday that the deal was being finalised after receiving the green light from Trump. “My understanding is it’s now between us and the Mauritian government to finalise the deal, following the discussions with the US,” he said.

Trump told Keir Starmer during his visit to the White House in February that he was “inclined to go with your country” over the Chagos deal and that he had “a feeling it’s going to work out very well”.

The plan to cede control over the islands was announced in October, before a change of administration in Mauritius and Trump’s return to the White House threw it in doubt.

Senior figures in Trump’s administration including Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, criticised the proposals, and Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, spent months openly lobbying the president and his advisers to reject the deal, creating embarrassment for the Labour government.

Critics have argued that the handover will compromise the security of the joint military base because of Mauritius’s relationship with China.

UK officials claim the links between Mauritius and China are overstated, however, and that India is the more influential regional power. Mauritius is one of the few countries in the region that has refused to take part in China’s belt and road initiative.

Ministers have also argued that the UK has to give up the territory due to international legal rulings in favour of Mauritius, and that legal uncertainty over the legitimacy of the military base could compromise its security.

The UK government revealed it would spare China from facing stronger rules as part of its register of foreign lobbyists coming into force on 1 July.

Russia and Iran would both be included in the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme once it was launched this summer, Dan Jarvis, the security minister, told the Commons.

The enhanced tier of the scheme is reserved for countries that pose a risk to UK national security. Anyone who is directed by Russia or Iran to carry out activities in the UK must declare it or face five years in prison.

Jarvis declined to comment on China’s status in the scheme or to speculate on “which countries may or may not be specified in the future”. Should ministers decide to impose stricter rules on China or any other countries such as North Korea, they will need to give three months’ notice of the change.

Announcing greater restrictions on Russian activity, Jarvis said Moscow “presents an acute threat to UK national security” and that its “hostile acts have ranged from the use of a deadly nerve agent in Salisbury, espionage, arson and cyber-attacks, including the targeting of UK parliamentarians through spear-phishing campaigns”.

In response Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, described China as the “elephant in the room” and said the country “engages in industrial-scale espionage, seeking to steal technology from government, universities and from industries. They repress Chinese citizens here and have sought to infiltrate our political system.”

The foreign influence registration scheme was expected to come into force last year but the new Labour government delayed its implementation.

Ministers said on Tuesday that they would work with business and academia to help them prepare for the scheme’s launch, and that there would be a three-month grace period to register existing ties with foreign states.

People displaced from their homes alongside the site of an oil pipeline under construction in Uganda have complained of being inadequately rehoused or compensated.

When completed, the East African crude oil pipeline (Eacop) will transport oil from the Tilenga and Kingfisher oilfields in western Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania.

The project – a partnership of the governments of both countries, the French oil company TotalEnergies, and China National Offshore Oil Corporation – has been touted by Uganda as transformative for the country’s economy. However, from the start, it has faced criticism over its potential impact on important ecosystems and displaced people.

About 13,000 people in Uganda and Tanzania have been displaced by the pipeline. Those obliged to move were given the option of resettlement or cash compensation.

On Tuesday, Haki Defenders Foundation, a Kampala-based nonprofit, and the University of Sheffield released a report based on interviews with 100 people affected by the pipeline in Uganda, including those whose land had been compulsorily acquired.

The researchers found that although the project included a resettlement plan in accordance with local laws and international best practices that emphasise restoration or improvement of livelihoods, many people reported unfair and inadequate compensation and a lack of transparency.

Those who chose resettlement moved to designated areas such as the Kyakaboga resettlement camp. The researchers found people were given uniform houses, regardless of household sizes, meaning larger households are overcrowded. A typical resettlement house consists of one bedroom and a living room.

The researchers also found that the resettlement sites lack basic infrastructure, with people having to travel long distances to access water, markets and medical facilities.

Among those who chose cash compensation, the researchers found many had felt under pressure to accept terms they did not fully understand due to language barriers and a lack of access to legal advice.

The report says that many people found the monetary compensation inadequate to secure new land or rebuild their livelihoods. Land was often undervalued, and compensation for residential structures was calculated based on government rates that did not account for regional variations or actual rebuilding costs.

In September, the Uganda government took landowners who refused to move to court.

Spokespeople for Eacop, TotalEnergies and the Ugandan energy ministry did not respond to requests for comment from the Guardian.

Eacop has previously said it was “committed to world-class environmental and social compliance” and was carrying out land acquisition “in compliance with national laws and the applicable international standards”.

Jonathan Silver, a professor of urban geography at the University of Sheffield and co-author of the study, said the research aimed to show how large-scale infrastructure projects affected lives. “We cannot forget the lived experiences of those displaced,” he said. “We should pay attention to the ways in which projects such as Eacop cause a spectrum of harm.”

A total of 6.5bn barrels of crude oil were discovered in western Uganda in 2006. According to an analysis by the Climate Accountability Institute, transporting, refining and burning oil would produce 379m tonnes of global carbon emissions over the 25-year operation of the pipeline.

The project, which is due to be completed next year, is expected to cost about $5bn (£3.87bn).

The researchers also found that authorities in Uganda had suppressed dissent about the project by affected people, activists and community-based organisations. People have been denied permits to hold peaceful protests, and where the assemblies have taken place, security forces have violently dispersed them.

As part of what activists call a government crackdown on protesters against Eacop, 11 environmental activists were charged with “common nuisance” and remanded after a rally in Kampala in February.

Dr Tom Ogwang, a senior lecturer in political economy of natural resource at Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda, said it was important for concerns about the pipeline to be addressed. “If people feel they have been given a raw deal, then their hearts and minds will never be for that project,” said Ogwang, who has researched Eacop’s impacts.

Niger’s ruling junta has quit a regional force fighting armed Islamist groups in west Africa’s Lake Chad area, cementing an acrimonious split from former allies in the region.

The decision to exit the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) was announced in a bulletin on state television over the weekend. The move “reflects a stated intent to reinforce security for oil sites”, the bulletin stated, without providing further details.

The MNJTF was formed in 2015 by Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria in the wake of increasing jihadist attacks across their territories. At its peak, it had an estimated 10,000 troops and fought many armed groups, especially Boko Haram and its offshoots. But any serious progress has been hampered or even undone by poor collaboration and equipping, analysts say.

“The force was never that effective, said Ulf Laessing, the Bamako-based director of the Sahel programme at Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a German thinktank. Its decline, he added, was “good news for jihadists and it is bad news for villagers on the lake side, fishers or farmers who just want to go about their business but who will now get less military support”.

Niger’s exit from MNJTF came days after the junta’s leader, Abdourahmane Tiani, was sworn in as president until 2030 under a new charter that suspended the constitution and dissolved all political parties.

Niger has also isolated itself from the Economic Community of West African State (Ecowas), after Ecowas imposed a range of sanctions following the coup that ousted the democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, in July 2023.

Within two months of the coup, it had joined the splinter Alliance of Sahel States (AES) along with Burkina Faso and Mali, where there have also been military takeovers since 2020.

Since then, AES has introduced new biometric passports to replace the old regional passports and on Monday, it announced a 0.5% levy on imported goods from Ecowas states.

Ikemesit Effiong, managing partner at Nigerian geopolitical risk advisory SBM Intelligence, said the levy put an end to “a long history of free trade across the western Sahel” and could change the dynamics of Ecowas’s negotiations with AES.

“When squared with Ecowas’s statement commitment to keep open trade and borders with AES states, I think this [levy] will force Ecowas to drop its kids’ gloves strategy and be more forceful with the AES,” Effiong said.

It remains unclear what impact Niger’s withdrawal from the MNJTF will have on a security agreement signed with neighbouring Nigeria last August. Both countries share centuries of history and a border that spans 1,000 miles but Nigeria-led Ecowas’s push for a rapid return to democratic governance has caused friction between both countries.

Effiong said recent moves in the capital, Niamey, which has been seeking new military and economic partners since expelling French troops in 2023, are unsurprising.

“Niger has been pulling out of all its main regional bilateral and multilateral commitments, much of which it sees as western influenced or inspired,” said Effiong, who noted that MTNJTF had received military and intelligence aid from western partners in the past.

“Although we are trying to replicate Uganda and Kenya we are actually in Cheshire so the weather is slightly different,” admits Chester zoo boss, Jamie Christon, on a fresh and very grey Monday morning.

But ignore the chilliness and screw your eyes and you could well be transported to a sweeping African savannah where, one day, there will be giraffes, zebras, antelopes and ostriches roaming majestically side by side.

Christon is speaking at the launch of the UK’s biggest ever such zoo development – a £28m facility called Heart of Africa.

It covers just over 9 hectares (22.5 acres) and is home to 57 African species including vultures, rhinos, a colony of naked mole rats and 15,000 locusts.

More than 6,000 trees, shrubs, and grasses have been planted and the idea is to recreate a variety of grassland habitats. The possible star of the show is the 3.5-acre sandy, rocky savannah where a number of species will roam together, just as they would in the wild.

The zoo is taking things slowly. Sam Harley, a giraffe keeper, admits her charges have been less enthusiastic than the zebras about sharing paddock space.

But it’s early days and understandable. “Most of our giraffes were born here so the only other animals they had ever seen were the Congo buffalo across the road,” she said.

It’s also a bit cold for a giraffe, which is practically all muscle and no fat. Plus, they have a new state-of-the-art giraffe house heated to a constant 23C, so staying indoors has its attractions.

Christon said they would take things slowly. “It is difficult to know how the animals will mix and how they will get on with each other so we are just doing it really, really gradually making sure everyone is comfortable – the animals and the keeping staff.”

Over the past few weeks staff have been letting animals out together for short periods. “It’s baby steps. We want to make sure everyone’s happy and we are not putting any animals under pressure.”

Elsewhere, white-headed vultures seem content with the dead animal carcass breakfast they have been served. In other enclosures there is a flock of 107 flamingos, an aviary of black-cheeked lovebirds, Africa’s rarest species of lovebird, as well as meerkats, African wild dogs, aardvarks, yellow mongoose and dik-dik.

The zoo came up with the Heart of Africa concept in 2017 with the assumption that building would begin in 2020. The pandemic and resultant zoo closure for 208 days set them back. A spade finally got in the ground in November 2022 and work was completed at the end of last year.

Christon said one aim was to shine light on the biodiversity crisis in Africa and the work being done to save species.

“Some of these species are critically endangered in the wild and unfortunately their numbers are going the wrong way. So we are doing work here and we are doing work out in Uganda and Kenya.”

He hopes it honours the spirit of George Mottershead, who created the zoo in the 1930s. After being horrified by caged and chained animals he encountered in an amusement park in Manchester, Mottershead had the dream of creating a “zoo without bars”.

Today, Chester is the most visited zoo in the UK including 150,000 schoolchildren a year.

Christon said he understands that some people are opposed to even the concept of a zoo but for him it is all about conservation. He sees the project as a “symbol of our commitment to safeguarding wildlife across Africa”.

While the Heart of Africa project cost £28m, the aim was that it would increase visitor numbers by 200,000 a year and pay for itself. Crucially it should generate an extra £3m to spend on conservation, he said.

Mark Brayshaw, head of mammals at the zoo, believes the project will enrich the lives of the animals in the zoo’s care.

“It has been a huge undertaking and occupied a lot of our time,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve had any blood but there’s been a lot of sweat, maybe a few tears along the way.

“To finally get to the end is fantastic and a big relief but actually the real work starts now … there is plenty to keep us busy.”

Videos of Sudan’s national museum showing empty rooms, piles of rubble and broken artefacts posted on social media after the Sudanese army recaptured the area from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in recent days show the extent of looting of the country’s antiquities.

Fears of looting in the museum were first raised in June 2023 and a year later satellite images emerged of trucks loaded with artefacts leaving the building, according to museum officials. But last week, as the RSF were driven out of Khartoum after two years of war, the full extent of the theft became apparent.

A video shared by the Sudan Tribune newspaper showed the museum stripped bare, with only a few large statues remaining, including the seven-tonne statue of King Taharqa, a pharaoh who ruled Egypt and Kush (present-day Sudan) from 690 to 664BC. Others showed ransacked rooms and smashed display cabinets.

The museum held an estimated 100,000 artefacts from thousands of years of the country’s history, including the Nubian kingdom, the Kushite empire and through to the Christian and Islamic eras. It held mummies dating from 2500BC, making them among the oldest and archaeologically most important in the world.

Elnzeer Tirab Abaker Haroun, a curator at the Ethnographic Museum in Khartoum, said a specialist team visited the site after the RSF were expelled to assess the damage, which they will be documenting in a report.

“The tragedy was immense,” he said. “Most of the museum’s rare artefacts, as well as its precious gold and precious stones, have been lost.”

The theft includes not only items on public display but those held inside a fortified room, including gold, which it is feared have been smuggled out of the country for sale abroad.

Unesco, the UN’s cultural agency, has previously called on art dealers not to trade, import or export artefacts smuggled out of Sudan.

The scale of the damage to the museum and Sudan’s heritage has been felt deeply by Sudanese.

“Seeing the Sudan National Museum being looted and destroyed by RSF was one of the most painful crimes … I felt ashamed and angry,” said Hala al-Karib, a prominent Sudanese women’s rights activist.

As a student, Karib and her friends would walk through the building admiring the artefacts from ancient kingdoms and jokingly posing as if they were themselves the queens depicted.

She first started visiting the museum with her father and, when she became a parent herself, took her own daughter there almost weekly.

“It was very personal; we are proud people and continually inspired by our ancient civilisation – it is the heritage we pass on to our children and grandchildren.”

Many view it as a tragedy emblematic of the loss the country has suffered since the war started in 2023 during a power struggle between the army commander, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF’s leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo

Shahenda Suliman, a Sudanese trade unionist, said: “Whilst the human tragedy of this war outweighs everything for me, there’s a symbolism there in seeing emptiness where these grand objects once stood that sort of captures the scale of destruction, loss and emptying of the country that we’ve seen since the war started.

“There are artefacts that have survived every plague, invasion and occupation for millennia, and predate the birth of Christ, that didn’t survive this war.”

Dallia Mohamed Abdelmoniem, a former journalist displaced from Khartoum by the war, said the loss of the museum’s heritage was especially significant as an appreciation of Sudan’s ancient history has become more widespread only recently.

She highlighted how the term Kandaka – a title for queens from the ancient kingdom of Kush – was used to describe female activists who participated in the 2018 protest movement that ousted the dictator Omar al-Bashir.

“I don’t know how we’ll be able to replace these priceless historical artefacts – and if there’s a will to do so,” said Abdelmoniem.

“The majority of Sudanese have been adversely affected on so many levels by this war, the restoration and return of items of historical, cultural and ancient significance I fear may not be viewed as a priority.”

Donors abandoned the charity Prince Harry founded in memory of his late mother when he left the UK, the chair of Sentebale has said amid a bitter media row.

There was a “significant correlation” between a drop in funders and the Duke of Sussex’s departure to the US following controversy caused by his rift with the royal family, Sophie Chandauka told Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme.

It was “pretty obvious” the charity, which supports HIV and Aids sufferers in Lesotho and Botswana, had lost corporate sponsors and individual donors around that time but there was “no discussion” about it, she said, as trustees told her it was “uncomfortable” with Prince Harry in the room, added Chandauka, a Zimbabwean lawyer.

She told the programme: “So when I arrived in July in 2023, of course the first thing you do is you open the annual report, you look at the board minutes to see what is going on in the organisation.

“I did a seven-year historical review of the financials, looking at our costs and looking at our revenue, so income, it was pretty obvious to me that we had lost quite a number of corporate sponsors.

“We’d lost some families, and we’d lost individuals who were donating to the organisation, and there was quite a significant correlation between the time the organisation started to see a departure of sort of major organisations, and Prince Harry’s departure from the UK itself.

“When you look at the board minutes, though, there is no discussion about what’s happening with respect to some of our most significant funders and then when you discuss with the senior executive team and ask why there isn’t a conversation about this – the answer is ‘it’s really difficult to have this conversation because the instruction was, it’s uncomfortable conversation to have with Prince Harry in the room’.”

Sentebale and Harry’s representatives have been approached for comment.

The interview, trailed on Saturday and aired in full on Sunday morning, included allegations of “harassment and bullying at scale” from the prince towards the chair, after Harry and several others quit the organisation earlier this week.

Though Harry has not commented specifically on the bullying and harassment allegations, sources close to the prince said the claims were “completely baseless”.

A source close to the charity’s trustees and patrons said they “fully expected this publicity stunt” and reached their collective decision with this in mind. They added they “remain firm in their resignation, for the good of the charity, and look forward to the adjudication of the truth”.

Two named former trustees have come out in support of the prince, with Kelello Lerotholi, who resigned from the charity this week, telling Sky News he did not recognise the allegations: “I can honestly say, in the meetings I was present in, there was never even a hint of such.”

The prince, who she said had not been to Africa for five years, had made moves against her, adding further trustees to the charity’s board in efforts to bolster his control, she said. In a separate interview with the Financial Times, Chandauka said there was noticeable friction between the UK staff and those based in Lesotho, where most of the charity’s 500-plus workforce is based. She said the board felt “a loss of power and control and influence … oh my goodness, the Africans are taking over”.

When Harry could not have her removed through a vote, due to a legal challenge, she alleges, he aimed to sabotage the charity, which he set up in 2006 in memory of his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.

She claimed the rift became public with the prince’s “unleashing of the Sussex machine” against Chandauka, who appeared on Sky News with another board member, the investment banker Iain Rawlinson.

The Conservative peer Lynda Chalker, who served as a trustee for nearly two decades until November, described Chandauka as having an “almost dictatorial” style.

The chair of a charity set up by Prince Harry has accused him of “harassment and bullying at scale” after he and several others quit the organisation earlier this week.

The Duke of Sussex was said to have initiated the campaign by the “unleashing of the Sussex machine”.

Dr Sophie Chandauka, the chair of the charity Sentebale, which helps children and adolescents struggling to come to terms with diagnoses of HIV and Aids, told Trevor Phillips on Sky News: “The only reason I’m here … is because at some point on Tuesday, Prince Harry authorised the release of a damaging piece of news to the outside world without informing me or my country directors, or my executive director. That is an example of harassment and bullying at scale.”

On Tuesday, Prince Harry quit as patron of the charity. He released a joint statement with co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, claiming they had been forced to step down “in support of and solidarity with” the board of trustees who had also resigned, due to a dispute with Chandauka, which reportedly arose from a decision to focus fundraising in Africa.

Harry and Seeiso wrote that the relationship “broke down beyond repair, creating an untenable situation”.

Sky News reports that one of their sources, who is “close to the former trustees of the Sentebale charity”, said that Chandauka’s accusation that she was bullied by Prince Harry and the “Sussex machine” was completely baseless.

In a statement earlier this week, Chandauka said: “There are people in this world who behave as though they are above the law and mistreat people, and then play the victim card and use the very press they disdain to harm people who have the courage to challenge their conduct.

“Beneath all the victim narrative and fiction that has been syndicated to the press is the story of a woman who dared to blow the whistle about issues of poor governance, weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny, misogynoir – and the cover-up that ensued.”

Sentebale was set up in 2006 by Harry after spending two months in Lesotho during his gap year in 2004.

The prince’s acrimonious departure from the charity comes five years after he told a Senteble dinner party in 2020: “When I lost my mum … you took me under your wing. You looked out for me for so long. Together, you have given me an education about living, and this role has taught me more about what is right and just than I could ever have imagined,” he told dinner guests. “We are taking a leap of faith, so thank you for giving me the courage to take this next step.”

Representatives for Harry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.

A Kenyan man who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death over an attack on British tourists is suing the Metropolitan police over its role in the case.

Ali Kololo was imprisoned for more than a decade in what his lawyers called “appalling conditions” before being released when his conviction was quashed in 2023.

He was the only suspect prosecuted over the murder of publishing executive David Tebbutt and the kidnapping of his wife, Judith, on a remote Kenyan island resort in 2011. Tebbutt was shot dead. His wife was taken into Somalia and released following a ransom payment six months later.

Kololo, who is now in his mid-40s, is seeking compensation from the Met, accusing the force of providing misleading evidence to a Kenyan court that played a key role in his wrongful conviction. The first stage of the case will be heard at the Central London county court on Friday.

Emails seen by the Observer reveal that the Home Office authorised the deployment of Met police officers to Kenya despite knowing the case could result in the death penalty.

Reprieve, a legal charity representing Kololo, said the decision violated government rules against providing assistance that “might directly or significantly contribute to ... use of the death penalty, both the imposition of the death sentence and executions”.

Preetha Gopalan, Reprieve’s joint head of UK litigation, said a series of emails between the Home Office and Foreign Office, released after a subject access request, showed a “level of panic” about Kololo having been sentenced to death for the offence of robbery with violence.

Kololo, a young father who worked as a honey-gatherer and woodcutter on the island where the Tebbutts were holidaying, was accused of directing the gang behind the attack to a hut where the couple were sleeping.

Judith Tebbutt later told the Sunday Times she believed that Kololo was innocent and had been scapegoated by Scotland Yard. Kololo’s lawyers have accused former detective chief inspector Neil Hibberd, who has retired, of omitting key information that cast doubt on the prosecution’s allegations that a footprint linked Kololo to the crime scene.

Reprieve said a Kenyan court was not told that the Met Police’s analysis of a partially washed-away imprint on a sandy beach had been inconclusive. Kololo did not fit a pair of shoes presented as a match for the footprint during his trial, and said he was barefoot on the day in question.

Gopalan said the Met’s support for the prosecution and Hibberd’s evidence in court was “the nail in the coffin to secure the conviction”. She added: “His conviction rested heavily on the footprint, but the whole time, the Met had analysis that undermined the evidence.”

An investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found that Hibberd would have had a case to answer for gross misconduct if he were still a serving officer, but that it could take no action after his retirement.

Emails released by the Home Office to Reprieve also show that officials were warned in 2012 that “the death penalty remains on Kenya’s statute books and may be available for one of the offences”, but went on to authorise the Met deployment for the case.

“The death penalty was mandatory for this offence,” Gopalan said. She added that there was a moratorium on executions in Kenya at the time, but this was “not a sufficient assurance”.

The Foreign Office advised the Home Office that it would “not be seeking explicit assurances on the use of the death penalty from Kenyan authorities” because the moratorium made it a “low risk”.

Gopalan said Kololo’s trial had also been structurally unfair because he did not have legal representation and had to cross-examine 20 witnesses, including Hibberd, himself. He was illiterate and did not have an interpreter for proceedings that were not conducted in his first language.

Kololo said in a statement via Reprieve: “Being sentenced to death was torture in itself. It’s by sheer luck that I was able to come out of prison with my mind intact. I pray for my case to succeed so that I can live like other human beings.

“I used to work hard to look after my family but my time in prison has left a big gap, which is very difficult to fill. My health has deteriorated and I cannot go back to doing the work I used to do. I have to struggle to provide for my children and look after my mother.”

Gopalan said the Metropolitan police should “put its hands up” over the case, apologise and pay appropriate compensation. “[Kololo] is lucky to be free and to be able to mount a claim, but the question remains: is this still happening?” she said.

“Is the UK government continuing to provide this kind of assistance to countries around the world and becoming complicit in human rights violations because they haven’t learned the lessons from the past?”

Home Office minister Diana Johnson said last week: “Under Section 26 of the Police Act 1996, the Home Secretary is responsible for providing consent for the deployment of all serving police officers and staff from England and Wales forces overseas and where advice or assistance is being provided to a foreign agency. The Section 26 process is a rigorous process undertaken by officials ... exercising due diligence on any proposed police deployments, including that assistance overseas meets the UK’s human rights obligations and values.”

The Metropolitan police said it could not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

At least six people have reportedly died and nine have been injured after a 44-seater tourist submarine sunk off the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada.

The incident, involving a recreational vessel operated by Sinbad Submarines, occurred in waters opposite Hurghada’s Marriot Hotel resort.

Citing municipal officials, Reuters and Associated Press reported that six foreigners had died. The Russian consulate in Hurghada said all the tourists on the submarine were Russia citizens.

It was not immediately clear what caused the submarine to sink.

The Sinbad club’s website says it offers short tourist trips in two submarines that it operates that have a maximum depth range of 25 metres.

According to the website its submarines allow tourists to “experience the beauty of the Red Sea’s underwater world without getting wet”.

The local governorate’s office told Reuters that all of those confirmed dead were foreign citizens, while survivors had been ferried by ambulance to several hospitals in the city.

Emergency crews were able to rescue 29 people, according to a statement released by the governorate.

Many tourist companies have stopped or limited traveling on the Red Sea due to the dangers from conflicts in the region.

South Sudan’s first vice-president and main opposition leader, Riek Machar, has been placed under house arrest, prompting a warning from the UN that the country is at risk of relapsing into widespread conflict.

Machar’s party said the arrest has effectively collapsed the peace deal that ended the 2013-2018 civil war.

In a statement on Facebook, the acting chair of SPLM-IO’s foreign relations committee, Reath Muoch Tang, said the defence minister and chief of national security accompanied a convoy of more than 20 heavily armed vehicles, had “forcefully entered” Machar’s residence, where his bodyguards were disarmed and an arrest warrant issued “under unclear charges”.

The arrest, alongside escalating armed clashes and reported attacks on civilians, “signals a severe unravelling of the peace process - and a direct threat to millions of lives”, the UN human rights commission in South Sudan said in a statement.

“Failure to uphold the protections enshrined in the peace agreement - including freedom of movement, political participation and the cessation of hostilities - will lead to a catastrophic return to war.”

Adhering to the agreement and protecting civilians are “critical to preventing all-out war”, the commission said.

Tang said Machar was being held with his wife, Angelina Teny, who is the country’s interior minister, at his home. Machar has been accused of supporting the White Army militia, which clashed with the military recently. Machar’s party denies ongoing links with the White Army, which it fought alongside during the war.

In a video address, the SPLM-IO spokesperson Pal Mai Deng said Machar was “in confinement by the government” and that his life was at risk.

The development poses a grave threat to the power-sharing agreement between Machar and the country’s president, Salva Kiir, his long-time rival. The agreement resulted from a 2018 peace deal to end the civil war, in which 400,000 people were killed.

Tensions have been rising in recent months. The White Army, a community militia loyal to Machar, launched attacks against the country’s military, the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF), in Nasir county earlier this month and overran an army base. The militia, which protects the Nuer community, said it had acted in self-defence.

The government responded by bombarding areas where the group is based and arresting opposition figures.

An SSPDF commander and a UN crew member were among at least 27 soldiers killed in gunfire as a UN helicopter was trying to evacuate soldiers from Nasir county on 7 March.

The deputy chair of SPLM-IO, Oyet Nathaniel Pierino, said Machar’s detention meant the power-sharing agreement had been abrogated.

It “effectively brings the agreement to a collapse, thus the prospect for peace and stability in South Sudan has now been put into serious jeopardy”, he said.

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011. A civil war between government and opposition forces swiftly followed, fought largely along ethnic lines.

The international community called for restraint after Machar’s arrest. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an eastern African trade bloc, said his detention seriously undermined the peace agreement and risked “plunging the country back into violent conflict”.

The head of the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, Nicholas Haysom, said the country stood on the brink of relapsing into widespread conflict that “will not only devastate South Sudan but also affect the entire region”.

He called for the parties involved to immediately cease hostilities and engage in constructive dialogue.

The US Bureau of African Affairs urged Kiir to release Machar and called on South Sudan’s leaders to “demonstrate sincerity of stated commitments to peace”.

At least six people have reportedly died and nine have been injured after a 44-seater tourist submarine sunk off the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada.

The incident, involving a recreational vessel operated by Sinbad Submarines, occurred in waters opposite Hurghada’s Marriot Hotel resort.

Citing municipal officials, Reuters and Associated Press reported that six foreigners had died. The Russian consulate in Hurghada said all the tourists on the submarine were Russia citizens.

It was not immediately clear what caused the submarine to sink.

The Sinbad club’s website says it offers short tourist trips in two submarines that it operates that have a maximum depth range of 25 metres.

According to the website its submarines allow tourists to “experience the beauty of the Red Sea’s underwater world without getting wet”.

The local governorate’s office told Reuters that all of those confirmed dead were foreign citizens, while survivors had been ferried by ambulance to several hospitals in the city.

Emergency crews were able to rescue 29 people, according to a statement released by the governorate.

Many tourist companies have stopped or limited traveling on the Red Sea due to the dangers from conflicts in the region.

Donald Trump has nominated a conservative, pro-Israel media activist as US ambassador to South Africa, at a time when the relationship between the two countries is at a nadir.

Leo Brent Bozell III founded the Media Research Center – whose website states it is “a blog site designed to broadcast conservative values, culture, and politics [and] to expose liberal media bias” – in 1987.

His son Leo Brent Bozell IV was sentenced to 45 months in prison in May 2024 for assaulting police and smashing windows in the 6 January 2021 Capitol riots. He was released in January as part of Trump’s mass pardon.

The 69-year-old’s nomination, which needs to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, comes after South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled earlier this month, and amid US claims that South Africa is discriminating against its white minority.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, had called Rasool “a race-baiting politician who hates America” after Rasool told a thinktank that Trump’s Maga movement was partly a response to “a supremacist instinct”.

In February, Trump signed an executive order cutting aid to South Africa, accusing it of racial discrimination against white Afrikaners, who ruled the country during apartheid. The order also offered them refugee resettlement.

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, told reporters on Tuesday he would appoint a “top-class” replacement for Rasool. He added that US funding cuts were “entirely within their own right … and in many ways a wake-up call … [to be] more self-reliant.”

The US-South Africa relationship had worsened under the previous US president, Joe Biden, after South Africa refused to take sides when Russia invaded Ukraine. In 2023, the then US ambassador, Reuben Brigety, accused South Africa of supplying Russia with arms.

Things soured further when South Africa brought a case accusing Israel, a US ally, of genocide in Gaza at the international court of justice. The UN court ordered Israel to take measures to prevent potential acts of genocide. Israel, which reacted furiously to the allegations, has until July to answer South Africa’s case.

However, Trump’s overturning of norms and spreading of misinformation about South Africa has catapulted the relationship into new territory.

“There is just an absolute disagreement on the way in which Ramaphosa and Trump see the world,” said Ziyanda Stuurman, an independent political risk analyst.

Trump’s executive order criticised South Africa for its case against Israel.

It also claimed that a law signed in January allowing land to be expropriated with “nil compensation” in limited circumstances enabled South Africa to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property”. The South African government has said that the US has similar laws allowing the government to take over land for public purposes.

Conservative Afrikaner groups that have the ear of Trump allies have promoted conspiracy theories of a “white genocide” in South Africa.

Meanwhile, land and wealth remain concentrated among white South Africans, who make up 7% of the population (about half Afrikaans), while black people represent 81%.

“How do you respond when it seems like the main motivation for the breakdown of the relationship is based on a complete and utter untruth, ie that whites are being treated badly,” said Melanie Verwoerd, a former ambassador to Ireland and MP for the African National Congress, the former liberation movement that has led all South African governments since the end of white minority rule.

South Africa’s history of successful negotiations to end apartheid, in which Ramaphosa led the ANC delegation, were cause for hope in improving relations, though, she said.

Some analysts suggest South Africa could build bridges through Elon Musk, the South African-born billionaire who is leading Trump’s bid to slash the size of the US government. Musk has been increasingly critical of South Africa, with Trump echoing some of his statements.

Musk, who wants to expand his satellite internet business Starlink globally, has repeatedly railed against a requirement that telecoms investors cede 30% of equity in their South African subsidiary to black owners.

On Monday, Musk posted on X: “The legacy media never mentions white genocide in South Africa.”

Last week, he criticised the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters party for singing the controversial Kill the Boers song at political rallies. A South African court ruled in 2022 that the song was not meant to be taken literally.

Dropping the equity condition could be part of a “pragmatic” deal that doesn’t compromise sovereignty, said Ronak Gopaldas, a director at risk consultancy Signal Risk: “I would focus on the commercial rather than the moral aspects.”

People living on the edge of a protected area in Malawi are taking legal action against an NGO that moved more than 250 elephants into the area, which they say have killed at least 10 people.

Villagers near Kasungu national park, which is Malawi’s second largest and crosses the Zambian border, say they are living in fear for their livelihoods and safety after 263 elephants were introduced in July 2022, causing a sharp spike in human-wildlife conflict. Ten people claiming to be affected by the translocation from Liwonde national park have begun legal action against the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), demanding that the conservation NGO construct adequate fencing to protect the 167 villages around the park and compensate local people for the damage caused by the elephants.

More than 50 children were orphaned between July 2022 and November 2024 as a result of the translocated elephants, according to local communities. Among the 10 people killed were John Kayedzeka, 31, who was trampled by a herd while working in a field in September 2022 and Masiye Phiri, 31, who died after she was charged by a bull elephant while in the garden with her two-year-old child a year later.

One farmer from Zambia said he was walking across his farm when he came across two elephants and a calf, which charged. “I couldn’t run away in time. They stepped on me and then broke off branches and covered me in them,” he said.

“I was in Lumezi hospital for four months while my wounds healed … Since that incident, my stomach is swollen on one side. I don’t know what is wrong. I can’t straighten my arm, so I can’t farm. I depend on the well wishes of others to survive,” the 53-year-old said. “I am very afraid to move around on my own, so I tend to stay at home alone. I am in pain all of the time.”

Two deaths do not directly involve elephants but have been blamed on the translocation: one person was killed by a hippo displaced by elephants and another by hyenas believed to be trailing the mammals out of the park. Local people say that elephants are also routinely raiding their crops and trampling fields, threatening their livelihoods.

The UK law firm Leigh Day has been instructed to act on behalf of the 10 people against Ifaw in the UK, Zambia and Malawi, potentially bringing the case to the high court in England. Claimants have not been named so far to protect their identities. While elephants have long been in the park, with populations falling due to poaching, local people said the spike in human-wildlife conflict started after the translocation.

“My farmland has been destroyed five times. Three times in April 2024. Twice in May 2024. I was growing maize, sugarcane, rice and beans. Everything was destroyed,” said one 73-year-old farmer. “Before the relocation, sometimes I could harvest 35 bags of rice. This year, I have nothing.”

Another farmer who lives on the Zambian side of the park, whose father-in-law was killed by the animals, is also part of the case.

“My father-in-law was old and he didn’t manage to run away and they trampled him, and he was killed. The news spread across the community and the community members went to help but he had already died,” she said.

In a statement, Ifaw said it had received notice of legal action in December and rejected allegations of wrongdoing.

“Ifaw is deeply saddened by all cases of human-wildlife conflict in and around Kasungu, where it has been working to support government and communities develop sustainable solutions for reducing human-wildlife conflict and promote coexistence,” a spokesperson said, highlighting that Malawi’s government had overall responsibility for its national parks. Ifaw provided technical and financial support, following international best practice while moving the elephants, they said.

The elephant translocation was among the largest of its kind and images of the operation were used for fundraising, with pictures of the mammals being lifted by crane described as “scenes reminiscent of the Disney classic Dumbo”. It was a three-way operation between Malawi’s national park service and two NGOs: Ifaw and African Parks.

Another claimant in the case said they hoped to live in peace with the elephants and wanted the NGO to take steps to protect them.

“We need the owners of the elephants to compensate us, they need to barrier the park, if they don’t barrier the park, they should find another way to protect us and our crops. We want to claim the damage and barrier the park. If it is like this next year how are we going to live? We can’t be removed from this place. These are our ancestral places, inherited. If we moved it would take a very long time to settle and start over,” they said.

“We can’t do anything as we are just human beings – we know the law, we can’t attack the elephants. We want to ensure there is protection. We are peace-loving people, we don’t want to have a war between us and the elephants. We just want peace.”

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage

The Duke of Sussex has resigned from an African charity he set up 20 years ago after infighting in the organisation, saying he is “in shock” and “truly heartbroken”.

Prince Harry and the co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho both stepped down as patrons on Tuesday until further notice after trustees quit over a dispute with the chair, Dr Sophie Chandauka, a lawyer who was appointed in 2023.

The Duke established Sentebale in Lesotho in 2006 in honour of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, after visiting the southern African country during his gap year. The dispute arose around a decision to focus fundraising in Africa, according to the Times.

Harry and Seeiso said in a statement: “These trustees acted in the best interest of the charity in asking the chair to step down, while keeping the wellbeing of staff in mind. In turn, she sued the charity to remain in this voluntary position, further underscoring the broken relationship.

“We thank all the trustees for their service over the years and are truly heartbroken they’ve had to follow through with this act.

“What’s transpired is unthinkable. We are in shock that we have to do this, but we have a continued responsibility to Sentebale’s beneficiaries, so we will be sharing all of our concerns with the Charity Commission as to how this came about.”

Sentebale, which means “Forget me not”, was created to help people in Lesotho and Botswana living in poverty and those suffering from HIV and Aids. Former trustees Timothy Boucher, Mark Dyer, Audrey Kgosidintsi, Kelello Lerotholi and Damian West released a statement announcing their decision to unanimously resign as board members.

“Today’s decision is nothing short of devastating for all of us, but we see no other path forward as the result of our loss in trust and confidence in the chair of the board.”

A spokesperson for the charity said it has not received resignations from either royal patron, adding: “We are pleased to confirm the restructuring of our board on 25 March 2025 to introduce experts with the capabilities and networks to accelerate Sentebale’s transformation agenda as announced last year.”

In response, Chandauka said: “Everything I do at Sentebale is in pursuit of the integrity of the organisation, its mission, and the young people we serve. My actions are guided by the principles of fairness and equitable treatment for all, regardless of social status or financial means.

“There are people in this world who behave as though they are above the law and mistreat people, and then play the victim card and use the very press they disdain to harm people who have the courage to challenge their conduct.

“Discerning readers will ask themselves: why would the chair of the board report her own trustees to the Charity Commission? Why would the high court of England and Wales hear her case and issue an emergency injunction to prevent the same trustees from removing her as the chair of the board?

“Well, because beneath all the victim narrative and fiction that has been syndicated to press is the story of a woman who dared to blow the whistle about issues of poor governance, weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny, misogynoir – and the cover-up that ensued.”

Britons are widely ignorant of the scale and legacy of Britain’s involvement in slavery and colonialism, a survey has found, with the vast majority unaware how many people were enslaved, how long the trade went on for, or for how long UK taxpayers were paying off a government loan to “compensate” enslavers after abolition.

The poll, released to coincide with Tuesday’s UN International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, was commissioned by the Repair Campaign, which is working with Caricom to secure reparatory justice for member states through health, education and infrastructure projects.

The sample of more than 2,000 people representative of the UK population found 85% did not know that more than 3 million people had been forcibly shipped from Africa to the Caribbean by British enslavers.

It also found 89% were unaware British merchants had enslaved people in the Caribbean for more than 300 years and that 75% did not know it was after 2000 that British taxpayers finished paying off the money borrowed by UK government in 1833 – equivalent to 40% of the government’s total annual expenditure at the time – to compensate enslavers for their “loss of property”.

Nonetheless, the survey found support for some form of reparations is growing, with 63% now agreeing that Caribbean nations and descendants of enslaved people should receive a formal apology, up 4% from last year’s poll, while support for financial reparations has also increased, with 40% now in favour. Ninety percent of those in favour of financial reparations said they should be directed toward long-term education, health and infrastructure projects.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, a Labour MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan Reparations, said she was “not surprised” about the lack of understanding about the scale of slavery, and that reparative justice also required education.

“People point to reparations and think merely in financial terms, but one of the most important things is correcting the record – because until people learn what happened there will not be that widespread, public will to make reparation possible,” she said.

The Labour government has said the UK will not pay cash reparations, but is working with Caribbean partners on issues such as security, growth and climate change.

Ribeiro-Addy said there had to be a “willingness to listen” from the UK government, which is yet to make a formal apology for slavery, faced with a “large chunk of the world” that was unified on the need for reparative justice. “For us not to listen is disgraceful and could have consequences of its own,” she added.

Walker Syachalinga, a solicitor at the law firm Leigh Day, which is investigating claims against institutions, companies and families, said of the survey’s findings: “They speak to what has been a feature of English law and commerce – this idea of offshoring the more unpalatable aspects of our history while retaining the benefits.”

Denis O’Brien, Repair Campaign’s founder, said the poll showed “heartening” growth in public support for an apology and reparations, but also “how little people in Britain really know about the country’s past.”

Dr Hilary Brown, a programme manager at Caricom Secretariat, said: “Our shared humanity demands justice for the horrific crimes committed. Addressing the knowledge gap in the UK on the country’s history of trading and enslaving Africans is urgent.”

The South African ambassador who was expelled from the US and declared persona non grata by the Trump administration was welcomed home on Sunday by hundreds of supporters who sang songs praising him.

Crowds at Cape Town International airport surrounded Ebrahim Rasool and his wife Rosieda as they emerged in the arrivals terminal in their home town, and they needed a police escort to help them navigate their way through the building.

“A declaration of persona non grata is meant to humiliate you,” Rasool told the supporters as he addressed them with a megaphone. “But when you return to crowds like this, and with warmth … like this, then I will wear my persona non grata as a badge of dignity.”

“It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets,” he said.

Rasool was expelled for comments he made on a webinar that included him saying the Maga movement was partly a response to “a supremacist instinct”.

Rasool said on his return home that it was important for South Africa to fix its relationship with the US after Donald Trump punished the country and accused it of taking an anti-American stance, even before the decision to expel him.

The US president issued an executive order last month cutting all funding to South Africa, alleging its government is supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran, and pursuing anti-white policies at home.

“We don’t come here to say we are anti-American,” Rasool said to the crowd. “We are not here to call on you to throw away our interests with the United States.”

They were the ex-ambassador’s first public comments since the Trump administration declared him persona non grata over a week ago, removed his diplomatic immunities and privileges and gave him until this Friday to leave the US.

It is highly unusual for the US to expel an ambassador.

Rasool was declared persona non grata by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, in a post on X on 14 March. Rubio said Rasool was a “race-baiting politician” who hates the US and Trump.

Although Rubio did not directly cite a reason, his post linked to a story by the conservative Breitbart news site that reported on a talk Rasool gave in a webinar organised by a South African thinktank. In his talk, Rasool spoke in academic language of the Trump administration’s crackdowns on diversity and equity programmes and on immigration, and mentioned the possibility of a US where white people soon would no longer be in the majority.

“The supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the Maga movement, the Make America Great Again movement, as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48% white,” Rasool said in the talk.

On Sunday, he said he stood by those comments and characterised them as merely alerting intellectuals and political leaders in South Africa that the US and its politics had changed.

“It is not the US of Obama, it is not the US of Clinton, it is a different US and therefore our language must change,” Rasool said. “I would stand by my analysis because we were analysing a political phenomenon, not a personality, not a nation, and not even a government.”

He also said South Africa would resist pressure from the US, and anyone else, to drop its case at the international court of justice accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Trump administration has cited that case against US ally Israel as one of the reasons it alleges South Africa is anti-American.

Aregawi was building a tour-guiding business when war struck Ethiopia’s Tigray region in 2020. He spent the next two years fighting on the frontline. Now he is among those who fear Tigray is on the brink of conflict once more.

“We don’t want to become a battleground, but it seems like war is near, maybe even inevitable,” he said.

The war between Tigray’s rebellious rulers and Ethiopia’s federal government ended in 2022, leaving about 600,000 people dead and nearly 10% of women aged between 15 and 49 living in Tigray raped, according to a British Medical Journal study.

But the failure to implement most of the ceasefire’s provisions – including the return of nearly 1 million displaced people – and a scramble over resources has split the ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) party.

Tensions escalated this month when Tigray’s interim president, Getachew Reda, tried to fire three senior military commanders, having previously accused his forces of attempting a coup.

A coup now appears to have taken place. Last week, a rival TPLF faction, led by the party chair Debretsion Gebremichael, installed its officials in provincial government offices. It also took over the mayor’s office and the main radio station in the regional capital, Mekelle. Getachew fled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital.

On Saturday a skirmish in Tigray resulted in three deaths. A few days before, another person was killed during a dispute in the town of Adi Gudem.

All week long queues formed outside Tigray’s banks as people withdrew their cash, and flights leaving the country sold out. Armed men roamed Mekelle’s streets at night, checking people’s ID.

“Fear and uncertainty prevail,” said a resident, who asked not to be named. “My friends are planning to leave for Addis Ababa, Kenya and Uganda because of the fear of war.”

Against this backdrop, concerns are also increasing over tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Despite fighting alongside each other in Tigray, the neighbouring countries have been at loggerheads for months over the determination of Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, to regain access to the Red Sea, which Ethiopia lost when Eritrea seceded in 1993.

Having previously made overtures to the breakaway republic of Somaliland, Abiy set his sights on Eritrea’s port of Assab. He has repeatedly said sea access was “existential” for Ethiopia, which with 130 million people is the world’s most populous landlocked country. He described losing Eritrea’s coastline as a “historical mistake”.

Eritrea has ordered a nationwide mobilisation and is trying to undermine Abiy by aiding rebels fighting Ethiopia’s military in the Amhara region bordering Tigray. There are reports that Eritrean intelligence helped Debretsion’s TPLF faction during last week’s coup.

Ethiopia has sent tanks and troops to the Eritrean border, and state media have been amplifying voices justifying Ethiopia’s claims over Assab port.

Last week, Gen Tsadkan Gebretensae, Tigray’s vice-president, warned that war could erupt “at any moment” and the region risked “becoming a battlefield” again.

Payton Knopf and Alexander Rondos, the former US and EU special envoys to the region, described developments as “dry tinder waiting for a match that could ignite an interstate war between Ethiopia and Eritrea”.

Abiy said he wanted Ethiopia to regain the port peacefully. “Ethiopia has no intention to invade Eritrea to gain Red Sea access,” he said on Thursday. “Our desire is to talk about it under the principle of give and take, in a mutually beneficial manner, and according to commercial law.”

He spoke after meeting the rival Tigray factions. It appears Abiy declined to intervene in support of Getachew, which could have sparked fresh fighting.

Abiy could seek a deal to secure the support of Tigray, which still has a formidable 200,000-strong military force.

Tigray’s new leaders, meanwhile, want to regain control of western Tigray, a fertile area with gold deposits that was seized by Amhara forces during the war. Any attempt to recapture it could also spark fresh conflict, said Ahmed Soliman, at the geopolitical thinktank Chatham House.

“The crux is how things evolve in Tigray and how Abiy responds,” Soliman said. “If there is no agreement, the situation could certainly escalate.”

Sudan’s military has retaken the presidential palace in Khartoum, the last bastion in the capital of rival paramilitary forces, after nearly two years of fighting.

Social media videos showed soldiers inside giving the date as the 21st day of Ramadan, which was Friday. A Sudanese military officer wearing a captain’s epaulettes made the announcement in the video, and confirmed the troops were inside the compound.

The palace appeared to be partly in ruins, with soldiers’ steps crunching broken tiles underneath their boots. Soldiers carrying assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers chanted: “God is the greatest!”

Sudan’s information minister said the military had retaken the palace in a post on X.

“Today the flag is raised, the palace is back and the journey continues until victory is complete,” Khaled al-Aiser wrote.

The fall of the Republican Palace, a compound along the Nile River that was the seat of government before the war erupted and features on Sudanese banknotes and postage stamps, marks another battlefield gain for Sudan’s military. It has made steady advances in recent months underGen Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan.

It means the rival Rapid Support Forces, under Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have been expelled from Khartoum after Sudan’s war began in April 2023.

The group did not immediately acknowledge the loss, which is unlikely to stop the fighting as the RSF and its allies still hold territory elsewhere in Sudan. Late on Thursday, the RSF claimed it seized control of the al-Maliha, a strategic desert city in North Darfur. Sudan’s military has acknowledged fighting around al-Maliha, but has not said it lost the city.

Al-Maliha is about 125 miles (200 km) north of the city of El Fasher, which remains held by the Sudanese military despite near-daily strikes by the RSF.

The head of the UN children’s agency has said the conflict created the world’s largest and humanitarian crisis.

The war has killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country. Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll.

The Republican Palace had been the seat of power during the British colonisation of Sudan. It also saw some of the first independent Sudanese flags raised over the country in 1956. It also had been the main office of Sudan’s president and other top officials.

The Sudanese military have long targeted the palace and its grounds, shelling and firing on the compound.

Sudan, in north-eastern Africa, has been unstable since a popular uprising forced the removal of the longtime autocratic president Omar al-Bashir in 2019. A short-lived transition to democracy was derailed when Burhan and Dagalo led a military coup in 2021.

The RSF and Sudan’s military then began fighting each other in 2023.

Burhan’s forces, including Sudan’s military and allied militias, have advanced against the RSF since the start of this year. They retook a key refinery north of Khartoum. They have also pushed in on RSF positions around the capital. The fighting has led to an increase in civilian casualties.

Bashir faces charges at the international criminal court of carrying out a genocidal campaign in the early 2000s in the western Darfur region with the Janjaweed, the precursor to the RSF. Rights groups and the UN accuse the RSF and allied Arab militias of again attacking ethnic African groups in this war.

Since the war began, the Sudanese military and the RSF have faced allegations of human rights abuses. Before Joe Biden left office, the US state department declared the RSF was committing genocide.

The military and the RSF have denied committing abuses.

The former Olympic swimming champion Kirsty Coventry has become the first woman to lead the International Olympic Committee in its 131-year history, after winning a shock first round win over a seven-strong field that included Britain’s Sebastian Coe.

The 41-year-old Coventry won 49 of the 97 votes of the IOC membership, giving her an immediate majority and also making her the first African to become IOC president and the most powerful woman in global sport.

But it was a crushing day for Lord Coe, who was widely accepted to have the best CV, having won two Olympic gold medals, run the London 2012 Games and been World Athletics president since 2015. He secured only eight votes, putting him in third place behind the Spaniard Juan Antonio Samaranch, who picked up 28 votes.

“The young girl who first started swimming in Zimbabwe all those years ago could never have dreamt of this moment,” said Coventry after her victory was confirmed by the outgoing IOC president, Thomas Bach.

“I am particularly proud to be the first female IOC president, and also the first from Africa. I hope that this vote will be an inspiration to many people. Glass ceilings have been shattered today, and I am fully aware of my responsibilities as a role model.

“Sport has an unmatched power to unite, inspire and create opportunities for all, and I am committed to making sure we harness that power to its fullest. The future of the Olympic Movement is bright, and I can’t wait to get started.”

Coe had positioned himself as the change candidate and protector of women’s sport, and had urged the IOC to be more open in its decision-making. However, his chances were hindered by becoming an impeccable enemy of Bach when World Athletics banned all Russian athletes from the Rio 2016 Olympics for state-sponsored doping.

Coventry’s victory came despite a manifesto that was widely seen as bland and a campaign that started slowly. However, in the final few days before Thursday’s secret ballot, strong lobbying from Bach and other senior IOC members appears to have been crucial.

But while her victory is hugely significant, it will be seen as controversial in some quarters. Coventry is the sports minister of a Zimbabwean government that is subject to sanctions from Britain, which are “aimed at encouraging the Government of Zimbabwe to: respect democratic principles and institutions and the rule of law”.

Others also see her as Continuity Bach and, with the German being made honorary president, some wonder how much democracy and reform she will implement.

Coventry will take over when Bach formally leaves office on Olympic Day, 23 June, having reached the maximum 12 years in office.

M23 rebels have captured a strategic mining hub in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, defying calls from the presidents of Rwanda and the DRC for an immediate ceasefire.

A Congolese army spokesperson said M23 was in control of the town of Walikale. An officer separately told Agence France-Presse its forces were about 20 miles (30km) away in the town of Mubi.

Walikale, in North Kivu province, is the farthest west that M23 has reached during its lightning advance that started in January.

The town has large deposits of tin and many significant goldmines. Tin is widely used as a protective coating for other metals and in industries including food packaging and electronics.

In taking control of Walikale, the rebels also seized a road linking four provinces in the east of the country, cutting off the army’s positions. It also puts them within 250 miles of Kisangani, the country’s fourth-largest city.

Gunfire rang out from near Nyabangi neighbourhood on Wednesday, according to Janvier Kabutwa, who lives in Walikale. An army source said the rebels were battling soldiers and pro-government militias after overrunning an army position outside the town in a surprise attack.

“The information is confirmed. The rebels are visible at the monument and at the Bakusu group office,” said Prince Kihangi, a former provincial official for Walikale, referring to locations in the town centre.

Heavy artillery fire was heard throughout Wednesday but stopped in the evening, giving way to sporadic gunfire, said Fiston Misona, a civil society activist in Walikale. “Our Congolese army is no longer fighting,” he said. “It’s as if we were being sacrificed.”

M23 captured Goma, the largest city in North Kivu, in late January. It then started moving south towards Bukavu, the second-largest city in the region.

More than 7,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands uprooted from their homes since January in the latest escalation in the conflict, which has lasted for decades and has its roots in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It is the worst escalation in more than a decade.

M23, which is backed by Rwanda, is one of dozens of armed groups fighting Congolese forces to make territorial gains in the DRC’s mineral-rich eastern provinces. It says its objective is to safeguard the interests of the Congolese Tutsi and other minorities, including protecting them from Hutu rebel groups that escaped to the DRC after taking part in the genocide. The DRC, the US and other countries say Rwanda is backing M23 in order to exploit the region’s mineral resources.

The fall of Walikale came a day after DRC’s president, Félix Tshisekedi, and his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, met in Qatar for their first direct talks since January and called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

The DRC and M23 had been expected to have their first direct talks on Tuesday in Angola after Tshisekedi’s government went back on its longstanding refusal to speak to the rebels, but M23 pulled out of the talks on Monday, citing EU sanctions against some of its leaders and Rwandan officials.

AFP, Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report