Two soldiers were killed when their motorcycles ran over a homemade bomb in southeast Burkina Faso on Monday, the latest attack in a region previously spared the jihadist violence of the north. The West African country has faced increasingly frequent and deadly attacks by jihadists forces linked to the Islamic State group or al-Qaida since 2015. The violence has killed

A case of Ebola has been confirmed in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the health minister said Friday, five months after the end of the most recent outbreak there. It was not immediately known if the case was related to the 2018-20 outbreak that killed more than 2,200 people in eastern Congo, the second deadliest on record, or the

The World Health Organization recommended Wednesday that children in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions on the continent with moderate-to-high malaria transmission receive a malaria vaccine. The vaccine, known as Mosquirix, proved effective in a pilot program in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that has reached more than 800,000 children since 2019. The WHO said malaria is a top killer of children

WHITE HOUSE — At the virtual COVID-19 summit on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly last week, U.S. President Joe Biden announced an additional donation of 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to low-income and lower-middle-income countries, bringing total U.S. pledged donations to 1.1 billion shots.   “I made — and I’m keeping — the promise that America

BAMAKO, MALI — One U.N. peacekeeper was killed and four more were severely wounded when their convoy hit an improvised explosive device in northern Mali on Saturday, the U.N. force in Mali said.   The bloodshed near the town of Tessalit followed the killing of five Malian gendarmes in an ambush on a mining convoy in southern Mali earlier this

Burkina Faso on Friday suspended the Norwegian Refugee Council from conducting humanitarian aid work in the country, citing critical interviews given to the media, including VOA. In a letter from Helene Marie Laurence Ilboudo-Marchal, minister for humanitarian affairs, the government cited interviews that NRC representatives had carried out with Voice of America and the French newspaper Le Monde as its reason for

Fifteen African countries have succeeded in fully vaccinating at least 10 percent of their populations against COVID-19 by September 30, a goal set by the World Health Organization in May. However, that leaves two-thirds of the continent’s 54 nations extremely vulnerable to the deadly disease. Several countries have performed extremely well. Seychelles and Mauritius have fully vaccinated more than 60

The U.N. secretary-general expressed “shock” Thursday after the Ethiopian government announced the expulsion of seven senior U.N. humanitarian officials working in the country. “In Ethiopia, the U.N. is delivering lifesaving aid — including food, medicine, water, and sanitation supplies — to people in desperate need,” Antonio Guterres said in a statement. “I have full confidence in the U.N. staff who

The International Rescue Committee says more than two million Kenyans are facing hunger due to poor rainfall. Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, declared a national disaster this month because of drought. Thirty-six-year-old Suleiman Ahmed Osman lost 50% of his livestock to drought in the past six months. He says more are dying now due to worsening drought. “When we lost this