200 migrants missing off Tunisia coast: official

200 migrants missing off Tunisia coast: official
TUNIS: Around 200 migrants are missing off the Tunisian coast after an operation to rescue some 800 people aboard a small ship that ran aground on a sandbank, the official news agency TAP reported Thursday.

A rescue operation that began Wednesday has lifted 570 people off the overcrowded vessel after it ran aground and capsized near Tunisia's Kerkennah islands, the agency said.

But around 200 were still missing after they tried to scramble aboard a flotilla of rescue boats, it said.

17 die in clashes in Mogadishu main market: official

17 die in clashes in Mogadishu main market: official
MOGADISHU: Clashes pitting Somali government forces and their African Union allies against Islamist rebels for control of Mogadishu's main market left at least 17 civilians dead on Thursday, officials said.

Many of the victims died when stray artillery fire hit a bus station where people were waiting.

"At least seventeen civilian dead have been counted so far and nine of them were killed after artillery fire struck a bus station near Arafat hospital," Ali Muse, head of the Mogadishu ambulance service, told media

100 killed in Abyei conflict: ex-administrator

100 killed in Abyei conflict: ex-administrator
JUBA: Around 100 people were killed when northern Sudanese troops overran the contested Abyei area last month, the former administrator of the flashpoint border district said on Thursday.

"We are fearing that the number of those who died is around 100," Deng Arop Kuol told AFP, adding that the toll was a "preliminary estimate."

"The situation there is very bad, and our people are suffering," he said.

Kuol, a southern appointee, was controversially sacked as Abyei's administrator by President Omar al-Bashir after Khartoum's troops and tanks occupied the disputed region on May 21, in what the south's government branded an "invasion."

Khartoum has since appointed Brigadier Izzedine Osman, who led the army's seizure of Abyei town, as the region's caretaker administrator.

The UN Mission in Sudan said they could not confirm the numbers killed.

"Our patrols following the fighting saw dead bodies," UNMIS spokeswoman Hua Jiang told AFP.

"At present, however, we cannot confirm a final casualty toll."

The United Nations says at least 60,000 people from the Abyei region have fled the violence, while the south claims many more have been displaced.