Russia loses seat on UN Human Rights Council
CNN, United Nations
For years, UN countries seeking to stop Russia from assisting the Assad regime militarily in Syria have been blocked by Moscow’s veto power as a permanent UN Security Council member. But on Friday at the UN, opponents of Russia’s punishing assaults in Syria achieved a small symbolic victory.
25 dead in Central African clashes
AFP, Bangui
Twenty-five people were killed, six of them gendarmes, in two days of violence around the town of Bambari in the troubled Central African Republic, the UN force MINUSCA said Saturday. Six police and four civilians were killed in an ambush by armed men Friday morning, while on Thursday 15 people died in fighting. on the town’s outskirts between the former Muslim Seleka militia and Christian vigilante groups known as “anti-balaka” (anti-machete), it said in a statement.
Bomb blasts kill 9 in Nigerian city
AP, Maiduguri
Twin explosions from suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers killed at least nine people in Nigeria’s northeastern city of Maiduguri on Saturday morning, a rescue official and witnesses said.
The first explosion came when two suicide bombers tried to enter a camp holding more than 16,000 refugees from Boko Haram’s Islamic uprising at around 7 a.m. according to civilian self-defense fighter Dan Batta.
