KINSHASA: An attempted jailbreak in Congo’s main prison left 129 people dead, including some who were shot by guards and soldiers and others who died in a stampede at the overcrowded facility, authorities said Tuesday. One prominent activist put the death toll at more than 200.
A provisional assessment showed that 24 inmates were fatally shot by “warning” shots fired by guards as they tried to escape from the Makala Central Prison in the capital Kinshasa early on Monday, Congolese Interior Minister Jacquemin Shabani said on the social media platform X.
“There are also 59 injured people taken into care by the government, as well as some cases of women raped,” he said, adding that order had been restored at the prison, part of which was burned in the attempted jailbreak.
Shabani did not elaborate on the incidents of rape in the prison, which has both male and female inmates, as well as military personnel facing charges.
It wasn’t immediately clear if all 129 fatalities were inmates and officials did not say how the stampede happened.
However, Emmanuel Adu Cole, a prominent prison rights activist in Congo, told The Associated Press that he counted more than 200 people dead in the attack and many of them had been shot. He cited videos shared from the prison as well as inmates he spoke to. The AP was unable to independently verify the videos.
Inmates had increasingly grown frustrated with the poor conditions in the facility, including inadequate beds, poor feeding and poor sanitation. However, authorities failed to act despite warnings, said Cole, president of the local Bill Clinton Peace Foundation, which has in the past visited the prison.
Makala, Congo’s largest penitentiary with a capacity for 1,500 people, holds over 12,000 inmates, most of whom are awaiting trial, Amnesty International said in its latest country report.
The facility has recorded previous jailbreaks, including in 2017 when members of a religious sect stormed the prison and freed dozens of inmates.
Stanis Bujakera Tshiamala, a prominent Congolese journalist who was recently detained in the prison for months, spoke of its “deplorable and inhumane” conditions and how inmates constantly lack food, water and medical care. Among the inmates are nearly 700 women and hundreds of minors “treated in the same way as adults,” he said.
“Makala is a real chaos (and) every day is a battle for life,” Tshiamala said.
Gunfire inside the prison started around midnight on Sunday and lasted into Monday morning, local residents in the area said.
“Shots were ringing out everywhere,” said Stéphane Matondo, who lives nearby, adding that military vehicles arrived shortly after and the main road to the prison was blocked.
Videos posted online show bodies lying on the ground inside the prison, many of them with visible injuries. Another video shows inmates carrying bodies that appeared to be lifeless and loading them into a vehicle.
There were no signs of forced entry into the prison, which is located in the city center, 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the presidential palace.
The attempted escape was plotted from inside the prison by inmates in one of the wings, Mbemba Kabuya, the deputy justice minister, told the local Top Congo FM radio.
In the hours following the attack, officials visited the prison as authorities convened a panel to investigate the incident. Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi, who is in China on an official visit, has not publicly commented.
Calling for an independent investigation, rights groups and the opposition accused the government of using excessive force and covering up the true death toll. An earlier statement from a senior government official on Monday said that only two people died.
Martin Fayulu, an opposition leader, compared the death toll to “summary executions” and said it was an “unacceptable crime that cannot go unpunished.”
Makala — among other prisons in Congo — is so overcrowded that inmates often starve to death, activists say. Scores of prisoners have been released in recent months as part of efforts to reduce the number of inmates.
Justice Minister Constant Mutamba called the attempted jailbreak a “premeditated act of sabotage” and promised a “stern response.” His deputy, Samuel Mbemba Kabuya, blamed the country’s magistrates and judges for the overcrowding in prisons, saying people are quickly jailed at the early stage of their trials.
Mutamba announced a ban on the transfer of inmates from Makala and pledged that authorities will build a new prison, among other efforts to reduce overcrowding.
Attempted jailbreak at a Congo prison kills 129 people as chaos erupts with a stampede and gunshots
https://arab.news/ymzug
Attempted jailbreak at a Congo prison kills 129 people as chaos erupts with a stampede and gunshots
- A provisional assessment showed that 24 inmates were fatally shot by “warning” shots fired by guards as they tried to escape from the Makala Central Prison
- It wasn’t immediately clear if all 129 fatalities were inmates and officials did not say how the stampede happened
DHL cargo plane crashes into a house in Lithuania, killing at least 1
- The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a “DHL cargo plane
VILNIUS: A DHL cargo plane crashed into a house Monday morning near the Lithuanian capital, killing at least one person.
Lithuanian’s public broadcaster LRT, quoting an emergency official, said two people had been taken to the hospital after the crash, and one was later pronounced dead. LRT said the aircraft smashed into a two-story home near the airport.
The Lithuanian airport authority identified the aircraft as a “DHL cargo plane flying from Leipzig, Germany, to Vilnius Airport.”
It posted on the social platform X that city services including a fire truck were on site.
DHL Group, headquartered in Bonn, Germany, did not immediately return a call for comment.
The DHL aircraft was operated by Swiftair, a Madrid-based contractor. The carrier could not be immediately reached.
The Boeing 737 was 31 years old, which is considered by experts to be an older airframe, though that’s not unusual for cargo flights.
UN chief slams land mine threat days after US decision to supply Ukraine
- The outgoing US administration is aiming to give Ukraine an upper hand before President-elect Donald Trump enters office
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the mines ‘very important’ to halting Russian attacks
SIEM REAP, Cambodia: The UN Secretary-General on Monday slammed the “renewed threat” of anti-personnel land mines, days after the United States said it would supply the weapons to Ukrainian forces battling Russia’s invasion.
In remarks sent to a conference in Cambodia to review progress on the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, UN chief Antonio Guterres hailed the work of clearing and destroying land mines across the world.
“But the threat remains. This includes the renewed use of anti-personnel mines by some of the Parties to the Convention, as well as some Parties falling behind in their commitments to destroy these weapons,” he said in the statement.
He called on the 164 signatories — which include Ukraine but not Russia or the United States — to “meet their obligations and ensure compliance to the Convention.”
Guterres’ remarks were delivered by UN Under-Secretary General Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana.
AFP has contacted her office and a spokesman for Guterres to ask if the remarks were directed specifically at Ukraine.
The Ukrainian team at the conference did not respond to AFP questions about the US land mine supplies.
Washington’s announcement last week that it would send anti-personnel land mines to Kyiv was immediately criticized by human rights campaigners.
The outgoing US administration is aiming to give Ukraine an upper hand before President-elect Donald Trump enters office.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the mines “very important” to halting Russian attacks.
The conference is being held in Cambodia, which was left one of the most heavily bombed and mined countries in the world after three decades of civil war from the 1960s.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet told the conference his country still needs to clear over 1,600 square kilometers (618 square miles) of contaminated land that is affecting the lives of more than one million people.
Around 20,000 people have been killed in Cambodia by land mines and unexploded ordnance since 1979, and twice as many have been injured.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) said on Wednesday that at least 5,757 people had been casualties of land mines and explosive remnants of war across the world last year, 1,983 of whom were killed.
Civilians made up 84 percent of all recorded casualties, it said.
Philippines’ Marcos says threat of assassination ‘troubling’
- Security agencies at the weekend said they would step up their protocols
MANILA: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos said on Monday he will not take lightly “troubling” threats against him, just days after his estranged vice president said she had asked someone to assassinate the president if she herself was killed.
In a video message during which he did not name Vice President Sara Duterte, his former running mate, Marcos said “such criminal plans should not be overlooked.”
Security agencies at the weekend said they would step up their protocols and investigate the statement, which Duterte made at a press conference. The vice president’s office has acknowledged a Reuters request for comment.
An average of 140 women and girls were killed by a partner or relative per day in 2023, the UN says
- The agencies reported approximately 51,100 women and girls were killed in 2023
- The rates were highest in Africa and the Americas and lowest in Asia and Europe
UNITED NATIONS: The deadliest place for women is at home and 140 women and girls on average were killed by an intimate partner or family member per day last year, two UN agencies reported Monday.
Globally, an intimate partner or family member was responsible for the deaths of approximately 51,100 women and girls during 2023, an increase from an estimated 48,800 victims in 2022, UN Women and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime said.
The report released on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women said the increase was largely the result of more data being available from countries and not more killings.
But the two agencies stressed that “Women and girls everywhere continue to be affected by this extreme form of gender-based violence and no region is excluded.” And they said, “the home is the most dangerous place for women and girls.”
The highest number of intimate partner and family killings was in Africa – with an estimated 21,700 victims in 2023, the report said. Africa also had the highest number of victims relative to the size of its population — 2.9 victims per 100,000 people.
There were also high rates last year in the Americas with 1.6 female victims per 100,000 and in Oceania with 1.5 per 100,000, it said. Rates were significantly lower in Asia at 0.8 victims per 100,000 and Europe at 0.6 per 100,000.
According to the report, the intentional killing of women in the private sphere in Europe and the Americas is largely by intimate partners.
By contrast, the vast majority of male homicides take place outside homes and families, it said.
“Even though men and boys account for the vast majority of homicide victims, women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected by lethal violence in the private sphere,” the report said.
“An estimated 80 percent of all homicide victims in 2023 were men while 20 percent were women, but lethal violence within the family takes a much higher toll on women than men, with almost 60 percent of all women who were intentionally killed in 2023 being victims of intimate partner/family member homicide,” it said.
The report said that despite efforts to prevent the killing of women and girls by countries, their killings “remain at alarmingly high levels.”
“They are often the culmination of repeated episodes of gender-based violence, which means they are preventable through timely and effective interventions,” the two agencies said.
Russia says it downs seven Ukrainian missiles over Kursk region
Russia’s air defense systems destroyed seven Ukrainian missiles overnight over the Kursk region, governor of the Russian region that borders Ukraine said on Monday.
He said that air defense units also destroyed seven Ukrainian drones. He did not provide further details.
A pro-Russian military analyst Roman Alyokhin, who serves as an adviser to the governor, said on his Telegram messaging channel that “Kursk was subjected to a massive attack by foreign-made missiles” overnight.
