AP, Tokyo
Japan is ending its peacekeeping mission in troubled South Sudan after five years, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced Friday.
Abe said Japan would not renew the mission after the current rotation returns in May. The 350-person team has focused on road construction. The team, which arrived in South Sudan in November, was Japan’s first with an expanded mandate to use force if necessary to protect civilians and U.N. staff.
1,000 ‘Boko Haram fighters’ put on trial
AFP, Niamey
Niger has begun the trials behind closed doors of about 1,000 suspected fighters from the Boko Haram jihadist movement, officials said Friday. Chief prosecutor Chaibou Samna told AFP that the trials, on charges of terrorist links, had begun on March 2.
Those facing trial are from several countries including Niger and Mali, Samna said, as well as neighbouring Nigeria where Boko Haram’s deadly insurgency began in 2009 before spreading abroad.
Two Ukrainian soldiers killed
AFP, Kiev
Ukraine’s army reported Saturday two soldiers killed in clashes with Russian-backed rebels, in a new uptick in violence across eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters that two servicemen were killed and another 16 wounded in the past 24 hours, accusing insurgents of using heavy weapons against government troops.
7 dead as Iran teen botches homemade fireworks
AFP, Tehran
An Iranian teenager, who was making fireworks at home for a festival ahead of the Persian New Year blew up his home, killing himself and six other family members, a prosecutor said on Saturday. The house in the northwestern city of Ardebil was flattened by the force of the blast, the city’s prosecutor general, Naser Atabati, told the judiciary’s Mizan Online news website.
He added that seven were killed in the blast, one was severely injured and three others got wounded.
