Africa Business

Russia’s war in Ukraine has forced a short-term scramble for fossil fuels but the rise of solar, wind and other clean energies is “unstoppable”, the head of International Renewable Energy Agency told AFP.

Speaking at the UN COP27 climate summit in Egypt, Francesco La Camera said market forces now all but ensure renewables will keep growing fast — but also warned that the pace will need to double to prevent a climate catastrophe.

The Ukraine war has led to a serious energy supply crunch and oil and gas price spikes that have forced especially European countries to quickly search for new suppliers as they head into winter.

“In the short term, this will have an impact,” said La Camera, director general of IRENA. 

“But in the medium and long term, there is no other way than to accelerate decarbonisation. Because ultimately renewables are not only good for the climate, jobs, GDP, but are a real way to ensure energy independence.”

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg also highlighted the strategic aspect of a shift away from dependency on Russia and other oil and gas suppliers to clean and safe renewables.

Russia’s “use of energy as a weapon”, he said, “is a stark reminder of the need to transition from dependence on fossil fuels to renewables, because that will make us less dependent on Russian gas and Russian oil”. 

Helping NATO allies and countries everywhere shift to green power will not just help mitigate global warming, he said, but will also “be good for our security”.

– ‘Market is the engine’ –

As delegates meet in Egypt, US President Joe Biden was assessing the likely election loss of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, many of whom are hostile to his climate policies.

But La Camera said he saw no danger of the United States backsliding in Biden’s push to expand clean energies.

“The market is the engine,” he said. “The market is already saying clearly that we are moving toward a system based on renewables and complemented by hydrogen, mainly green. No one can stop this progress.”

Even under ex-president Donald Trump, “coal-fired power plants were already closing in the United States,” said La Camera. 

“The question is not where we are going but how fast and at what scale.”

IRENA calculated in a report published for COP27 that the energy transition is not yet on track to meet the Paris Agreement goals of keeping global warming well below two degrees Celsius and preferable at 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era. 

“The figures say that we must double the ambition between now and 2030,” he stressed.

Countries worldwide are now on track for 5.4 terawatts of installed renewable electricity capacity by that year — only half of the 10.8 TW that would be needed to meet climate commitments.

– ‘Phenomenal potential’ –

Africa, where the COP is being held this year, has enormous potential to harness renewables, especially the power of the sun, but is so far lagging behind, experts say.

Investment in renewables there fell to an 11-year low last year, according to a report by research organisation BloombergNEF. 

The continent captured only 0.6 percent of global investments in the sector. 

“Africa has phenomenal potential,” said the IRENA chief. “They can produce 1,000 times the electricity and energy they need. This continent is an incredible powerhouse.

“But we need to review the way cooperation works,” he added. “Africa cannot develop and move towards a clean energy system without the right physical and legal infrastructure.”

La Camera warned against the temptation to promote new fossil fuel projects, a dream cherished by several countries including Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

“It’s in the interest of the continent to jump on the new train” and not “stay stuck in old technologies,” he said, predicting this would generate millions of new jobs and accelerate economic growth. 

“But this can only be done,” La Camera said, “if developed countries are ready to facilitate, to support, to work with Africans to make this possible.”

Since the withdrawal of the French army from Mali, Russia’s Wagner Group has replaced it as a target of jihadist propaganda, experts say, with extremists making hay with claims that its mercenaries have committed atrocities against civilians.

Having been pushed towards the exit by the leaders of Mali’s 2020 coup, France finally withdrew in August this year more than nine years after its military intervened to stop a jihadist takeover of the troubled Sahel nation.

The colonels in charge in Bamako have been increasingly turning to Russia, and particularly to Wagner’s paramilitaries, according to Western sources.

Bamako denies this, acknowledging only the support of Russian military “instructors”.

But it is Wagner that the Al-Qaeda-linked group Jama’at Nasr al‑Islam wal Muslimin, or JNIM, has been targeting in the information war.

“Wagner’s operations are mainly located in central Mali and mainly target the Fulani community, of which JNIM presents itself as the protector,” said Heni Nsaibia, a senior researcher at ACLED, which specialises in the collection of conflict-related data.

“There have been many clashes between the JNIM and the Malian armed forces and Wagner, who are operating jointly,” Nsaibia said.

“In many ways Wagner has replaced France as the foreign force in the conflict, even if the jihadists don’t refer to Wagner as ‘crusaders’ like they did to the French, but as a ‘criminal militia’ of mercenaries.” 

Wagner emerged in 2014 during the first war in Ukraine and is suspected by the West of doing the Kremlin’s dirty work in conflicts including Syria and the Central African Republic — a charge Russia has always denied.

– ‘Ethnic war’ –

JNIM boasts of having caught the “Malian army, Wagner’s mercenaries and pro-government militias in an ethnic war against Muslims” in an ambush in the central Bandiagara region late last month.

They also claim to have given Fulani herders back the animals that government forces had taken from them. 

For years “jihadists groups have presented themselves as the defenders of local populations from the army and its proxies, which according to them, do nothing but kill civilians,” said Boubacar Haidara, a researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies.

The use of this “alibi to justify their violence” has been made easier by the “arrival of Russian elements”, he argued, at the same time as the “toll on civilians has become more and more deadly”.

While the majority of the 860 civilians killed in Mali in the first six months of the year were the victims of jihadists, some 344 — or 40 percent — were killed in army operations, the United Nations said.

“The people judge by the atrocities committed on civilians,” said Binta Sidibe Gascon, of monitoring group Kisal, which stands up for Fulani communities. “Since Wagner arrived, and particularly after what happened in Moura, we are witnessing an exponential rise in the number of civilian victims.”

– Massacre –

Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Malian soldiers of massacring some 300 civilians in Moura in March with the help of foreign fighters, who witnesses said were Russian. The Malian army denies those killed were civilian, saying it “neutralised” more than 200 jihadists.

JNIM’s main leader in the region, the Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa, accused Wagner and the Malian army of the bloodbath in a rare video in June, claiming that only “around 30” of his fighters were killed, while the rest of the dead were “innocents”.

“What is going to wake people up,” said Sidibe Gascon, is that despite “all these atrocities against civilians, no territory is being retaken and sadly the situation is getting worse, with more displaced people, schools closed and a humanitarian crisis.”

However, Haidara said much of the Malian public “do not believe that civilians are being killed”, and are receptive to the military’s claims that talk of massacres are “French calumnies to denigrate the Malian forces when they are ‘doing more than Barkhane (the French military operation) was able to do in nine years.'”

But using Wagner has turned out to be “a very bad choice”, argued US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, late last month, “with a rise of around 30 percent in terrorist acts” in the past six months. 

The public perception in Mali, however, is very different, according to Niagale Bagayoko, president of the African Security Sector Network.

“If the government was looking to Wagner for help in the information war, it can be happy with the results. 

“In the capital and on social media they have won the opinion war against the West,” she added.

The family of Egypt’s jailed dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah said Thursday prison authorities had told them he is “under medical intervention”, as fear mounts that means force-feeding.

The family have repeatedly demanded information on the health of the British-Egyptian activist in recent days after he escalated his months-long hunger strike to include water too.

His mother Laila Soueif, at the Wadi al-Natroun prison north of Cairo, was informed that “medical intervention was taken” with Abdel Fattah “with the knowledge of judicial entities”, his sister Mona Seif wrote on Twitter.

“They should allow our mother to see him immediately and see for herself how he is,” Seif added.

Abdel Fattah, a veteran pro-democracy and rights campaigner, is serving a five-year prison sentence for “spreading false news” by sharing a Facebook post about police brutality.

International concern has mounted since Abdel Fattah, 40, also began declining liquids since Sunday, the start of the UN climate summit COP27 hosted by Egypt.

Since then, his mother had visited the Wadi al-Natroun prison about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Cairo, pleading for news. 

On Thursday, an officer told her that her son was “under medical intervention”, but gave no other details.

Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), the country’s largest rights group, said the prison officer statement “means he is being force-fed”.

– ‘Hidden behind high walls’ –

A key figure of the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, Abdel Fattah gained British citizenship this year.

“Surely our mother should see him, or someone from @UKinEgypt (British embassy in Cairo) so we understand his real health status!!” Seif added on Twitter.

The dissident’s aunt, novelist Ahdaf Soueif, earlier this week said the family was concerned about “rumours of force-feeding and of sleep-inducing drugs”.

She demanded that the British-Egyptian activist be moved to the Qasr al-Aini University Hospital, Cairo’s largest state medical facility, and given access to lawyers and British embassy officials.

She said she feared “the prison hospital is probably not equipped” to care for a patient who has been living for months “on 100 calories a day”.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have all voiced concern and called for his release.

United Nations rights chief Volker Turk has warned Abdel Fattah’s “life is in great danger”.

Activists at COP27 summit in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh have posted widely on Twitter under the hashtag #FreeAlaa, and several speakers have ended with the words “you have not yet been defeated” — the title of the jailed activist’s book.

On Thursday, hundreds of COP27 participants, dressed in white like Egyptian prisoners, chanted “Free him!” and “no climate justice without human rights!”.

Others shouted “Free them all!” in reference to the 60,000 political detainees rights groups say are incarcerated in the country, many of them in brutal conditions and overcrowded cells — accusations which Cairo rejects.

“We are carrying out this action to draw attention to those who are invisible, hidden behind high walls, incarcerated in the country hosting COP27 — and all over the world,” one of the organisers George Galvis said.

– ‘Unacceptable insult’ –

The issue is intensely sensitive in Egypt, ranked 135 out of 140 countries in the World Justice Project’s rule of law index.

As international criticism mounts, a counter-campaign has grown. 

One Egyptian lawmaker protested during a press conference by Sanaa Seif, Alaa Abdel Fattah’s other sister, at COP27 — before being expelled by UN security — and another has called on parliament to protest.

Egypt’s mission in Geneva slammed the intervention by the UN’s Turk, saying his “characterisation of a judicial decision as ‘unfair’ is an unacceptable insult”.

A lawyer has also filed a complaint against Sanaa Seif for “conspiracy with foreigners” and “false information”, according to campaigners calling for Abdel Fattah to be freed.

The prosecution has yet to decide on the complaint, the same potential charge of spreading “false information” that Abdel Fattah was himself jailed for.

He had shared a post — written by someone else — accusing an officer of killing an inmate under torture.

Fossil fuel lobbyists have flooded UN climate talks in Egypt, a report by watchdog groups said Thursday, as calls grow at the summit for a windfall tax on oil majors’ bumper profits.

More than 600 lobbyists from some of the world’s biggest polluters have registered to the climate talks in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, up 25 percent from last year, the analysis by groups including Global Witness and Corporate Accountability found.

They said that is more than the number of lobbyists from the 10 most climate-affected countries combined.

“There’s been a lot of lip service paid to this being the so-called African COP, but how are you going to address the dire climate impacts on the continent when the fossil fuel delegation is larger than that of any African country?” said Phillip Jakpor of Corporate Accountability.  

The groups scoured the official list of registered participants looking for those either directly affiliated with oil and gas companies, or people who are attending as part of delegations that “act on on behalf of the fossil fuel industry”.

Last year at the UN climate meeting in Glasgow, they counted 503 fossil fuel lobbyists registered.

The groups called on the United Nations to restrict access to the talks for fossil fuel firms, which the UN chief Antonio Guterres has said are “poisoning our planet”.

Oil companies have scored tens of billions of dollars in profits this year as crude prices have soared in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley called Monday for a 10 percent tax on oil companies to fund loss and damage.

Other small island nations threatened by the rise in seas caused by global warming joined her call on Tuesday.

“While they are profiting, the planet is burning,” said the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, adding that company profits should go towards the creation of a “loss and damage” fund to help vulnerable countries cope with the here-and-now impacts of climate change.

The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu became this week the second country to join calls for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, an initiative that seeks to stop new investments in coal, oil and gas globally and phase out production.

US climate envoy John Kerry urged Pacific island states on Thursday to join global efforts to cut methane emissions in hopes it would sway major emitters China and India to follow suit.

Speaking at the UN’s COP27 summit in Egypt, Kerry said 20 countries have yet to count methane as part of their pledges to cut emissions in global efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

“In those 20 states are China and India, and that’s a massive amount of methane,” he said at the event on protecting the oceans.

While he acknowledged that island nations account for a tiny proportion of methane emissions, he said they could make a “huge difference” by joining the effort.

“If the rest of the world joins in and makes it clear this is what we have to do, that will, I hope, encourage those other states … to join in the counting of methane” in their emissions plans, Kerry said.

“So I hope Cook Islands, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, PNG (Papua New Guinea) and Solomon Islands could really help set the expectations. You could be the final push for getting every country in the world to stand up and count it.”

Methane is the second biggest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide.

It is generated by the production, transport and use of fossil fuels, but also from the decay of organic matter in wetlands and elsewhere, and as a byproduct of ruminant digestion in agriculture.

Beijing and Washington jointly declared last year at the COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland that they would work together to control methane emissions.

While the United States has already laid out plans to cut its methane emissions to 30 percent below 2020 levels by the end of the decade, China has not yet announced its own roadmap.

Beijing froze climate cooperation with the United States following US House leader Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August.

Sitting next to a patient with depression on a garden bench in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, 70-year-old Shery Ziwakayi speaks gently, offering accessible therapy with a warm and reassuring smile.

“You have made the right decision to come to see mbuya”, she tells her client, using the Shona word for “grandmother” and offering a handshake. 

A Zimbabwean doctor has come up with a novel way of providing desperately needed mental health therapy for his poorer compatriots by using lay health workers, colloquially referred to as “grandmothers”.

Psychiatry professor Dixon Chibanda’s concept is simple: a wooden park bench where people experiencing common mental disorders sit and receive free therapy.

Chibanda’s Friendship Bench has proved popular and offered much-needed, accessible therapy.

Decades of economic hardships and deepening poverty have taken a mental toll on many Zimbabweans, imposing a huge burden on underfunded and understaffed psychiatric health services. 

The Friendship Bench has helped bridge a shortage of professional healthcare workers in Zimbabwe — which has only 14 psychiatrists, 150 clinical psychologists and less than 500 psychiatric nurses serving a population of 16 million people. 

“We need these alternative innovations to narrow the gap and my idea is to use grandmothers to provide therapy,” said Chibanda, wearing dreadlocks and round-framed spectacles.

The benches are spaces “to share stories and through storytelling we can all be healed,” he said.

– World Cup and WHO praise –

His therapy model is now being exported to the football World Cup in Qatar, where 32 benches — each representing a team competing in the FIFA tournament — will be set up to cast the spotlight on global mental health.

The World Cup project is in partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO), whose chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has praised the initiative as “a simple yet powerful vehicle for promoting mental health”.

It is “a reminder of how a simple act of sitting down to talk can make a huge difference to mental health,” Tedros said recently.

Other countries to have adopted the friendship bench model include Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, Zanzibar and the US — where 60,000 people in the Bronx and Harlem areas have accessed the therapy.

In Zimbabwe, about 70 percent of the population live below the poverty threshold.

Chibanda’s idea of friendship benches germinated after a patient he was treating at a government hospital took her life.

“She didn’t have $15 bus fare to come to the hospital to receive treatment for the depression,” he said.

“That was the initial trigger that instantly made me realise that there was need to take mental health from the hospitals into the communities.”

– ‘A masterstroke’ –

Grandmother Ziwakayi has offered therapy from the benches for the past six years, seeing an average of three clients a day.

“Through talking to us many have recovered and are leading normal lives again,” said Ziwakayi, who received training in basic counselling skills, mental health literacy and problem solving therapy.

The grandmas are given a stipend for their services, and the operation is financed by Chibanda’s NGO the Friendship Bench.

Her patients come from all walks of life — young, old, suffering from stress or dealing with drug addiction. Some are unemployed or in financial trouble, others are gender-based violence victims. 

On a white sheet clipped to a blue handheld board, she asks clients if they are frightened by trivial things; feel run down, or have felt like taking their lives, among a host of other questions.

Choice Jiya, 43, said she owes her life to the service offered on the benches, having considered suicide when her husband lost his job shortly after she gave birth to their twins in 2005.

“Before I went to the bench for therapy, I thought killing myself was a solution,” she said. 

She now operates a small business making perfumes and soap.

From just 14 grandmothers in Mbare — Zimbabwe’s oldest and poorest township — at the start in 2006, there are now nearly 1,000 benches and over 1,500 grandmothers in different localities.

They have assisted 160,000 people in the last two years alone.

The fall-out from the Covid pandemic has seen a spike in mental health problems and the WHO estimates that more than 300 million people across the globe suffer from depression.

Its most recent report “paints a very bleak picture”, showing six out of 10 countries with the highest suicide rates in the world are in Africa, said Chibanda.

For Harare’s Health Services director Prosper Chonzi, the benches are a “masterstroke”. 

“Demand for mental health services is high due to the economic situation. This is one of the best interventions. 

“It has made a huge difference in terms of averting suicides,” he said.

The leaders of Chad’s main opposition groups said on Wednesday that they had been forced into hiding over fears for their safety, following a deadly crackdown on anti-junta demonstrations.

Succes Masra, head of the Transformers party, told AFP he was in “another country” because he was wanted by the “presidential guard”.

Max Loalngar of Wakit Tamma said he was “hiding somewhere within the country” to avoid arrest.

Both opposition figures have accused the junta of “extra-judicial killings” and mass arrests as they suppressed protests over delayed elections. 

Officially, around 50 people died when security forces opened fire on the demonstrators in the capital N’Djamena and several other cities last month. But opposition groups say the actual toll was much higher, with unarmed civilians massacred, at least 300 people wounded and hundreds more arrested.

Masra and Loalngar said their groups have called on the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate alleged “crimes against humanity”.

The African Union Commission has condemned the violent repression, while Amnesty International said that a child was among the several dozen killed by the authorities’ excessive use of force. 

– ‘Insurrection’ –

Opposition groups had encouraged demonstrations on October 20 to mark the date when the ruling military had initially promised to cede power — a timeline now extended by two years by General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno. 

The 38-year-old took power from his father, Idriss Deby Itno, who ruled for 30 years before dying in an operation against rebels in April 2021.

The junta has branded the protests an “insurrection” supported by foreign powers.

In the aftermath, the government made hundreds of arrests, suspended all party political activity and imposed a curfew.

Authorities said the casualties included a dozen members of the security forces.

Prime Minister Saleh Kebzabo told AFP on Tuesday that the country had accepted the principle of an international inquiry “as soon as possible” into the protest deaths.

The following day, chair of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat — a former Chadian prime minister — stressed “the urgency of a serious and credible investigation” to bring those responsible to justice.

– ‘Manhunt is ongoing’ –

The Chadian Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, a local civil society group, says 600 people have been detained since October 20, with most “exiled” to labour camps and prisons far from the capital.

The World Organisation Against Torture says up to 2,000 people have been thrown behind bars.

Opposition figures Masra and Loalngar said the authorities had been hunting down their supporters in recent weeks.

“On October 21, soldiers from the presidential guard came to get me at our headquarters and when they didn’t find me, detained 27 members of my team,” said Masra.

“Only four are left alive being interrogated. The others are dead, some of those who were with them have told me, even if we don’t have the bodies,” he claimed.

“The manhunt is ongoing across the country.”

Loalngar told a similar story: “Security forces are going from house to house, people are being arrested for anything,” he said. “Like all our activists, I had to go into hiding.”

Contacted by AFP, several government representatives declined to say how many people had been arrested since October 20.

As Ugandan farmer Bonaventura Senyonga prepares to bury his grandson, age-old traditions are forgotten and fear hangs in the air while a government medical team prepares the body for the funeral — the latest victim of Ebola in the East African nation.

Bidding the dead goodbye is rarely a quiet affair in Uganda, where the bereaved seek solace in the embrace of community members who converge on their homes to mourn the loss together.

Not this time.

Instead, 80-year-old Senyonga is accompanied by just a handful of relatives as he digs a grave on the family’s ancestral land, surrounded by banana trees.

“At first we thought it was a joke or witchcraft but when we started seeing bodies, we realised this is real and that Ebola can kill,” Senyonga told AFP.

His 30-year-old grandson Ibrahim Kyeyune was a father of two girls and worked as a motorcycle mechanic in central Kassanda district, which together with neighbouring Mubende is at the epicentre of Uganda’s Ebola crisis.

Both districts have been under a lockdown since mid-October, with a dawn to dusk curfew, a ban on personal travel and public places shuttered.

The reappearance of the virus after three years has sparked fear in Uganda, with cases now reported in the capital Kampala as the highly contagious disease makes its way through the country of 47 million people.

In all, 53 people have died, including children, out of more than 135 cases, according to latest Ugandan health ministry figures.

In Kassanda’s impoverished Kasazi B village, everyone is afraid, says Yoronemu Nakumanyanga, Kyeyune’s uncle.

“Ebola has shocked us beyond what we imagined. We see and feel death every day,” he told AFP at his nephew’s gravesite.

“I know when the body finally arrives, people in the neighbourhood will start running away, thinking Ebola virus spreads through the air,” he said.

Ebola is not airborne — it spreads through bodily fluids, with common symptoms being fever, vomiting, bleeding and diarrhoea.

But misinformation remains rife and poses a major challenge.

In some cases, victims’ relatives have exhumed their bodies after medically supervised burials to perform traditional rituals, triggering a spike in infections.

In other instances, patients have sought out witchdoctors for help instead of going to a health facility — a worrying trend that prompted President Yoweri Museveni last month to order traditional healers to stop treating sick people.

“We have embraced the fight against Ebola and complied with President Museveni’s directive to close our shrines for the time being,” said Wilson Akulirewo Kyeya, a leader of the traditional herbalists in Kassanda.

– ‘I saw them die’ –

The authorities are trying to expand rural health facilities, installing isolation and treatment tents inside villages so communities can access medical attention quickly.

But fear of Ebola runs deep.

Brian Bright Ndawula, a 42-year-old trader from Mubende, was the sole survivor among four family members who were diagnosed with the disease, losing his wife, his aunt and his four-year-old son.

“When we were advised to go to hospital to have an Ebola test we feared going into isolation… and being detained,” he told AFP.

But when their condition worsened and the doctor treating them at the private clinic also began showing symptoms, he realised they had contracted the dreaded virus.

“I saw them die and knew I was next but God intervened and saved my life,” he said, consumed by regret over his decision to delay getting tested.

“My wife, child and aunt would be alive, had we approached the Ebola team early enough.”

– ‘Greatest hour of need’ –

Today, survivors like Ndawula have emerged as a powerful weapon in Uganda’s fight against Ebola, sharing their experiences as a cautionary tale but also as a reminder that patients can survive if they receive early treatment.

Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng urged recovered patients in Mubende to spread the message that “whoever shows signs of Ebola should not run away from medical workers but instead run towards them, because if you run away with Ebola, it will kill you.”

It is an undertaking many in this community have taken to heart.

Doctor Hadson Kunsa, who contracted the disease while treating Ebola patients, told AFP he was terrified when he received his diagnosis.

“I pleaded to God to give me a second chance and told God I will leave Mubende after recovery,” he said.

But he explained he could not bring himself to do it.

“I will not leave Mubende and betray these people at the greatest hour of need.”

Fighting resumed Wednesday in the Democratic Republic of Congo between the military and armed group M23, residents told AFP, a day after many people fled rebel-held territory being bombarded by military jets.

Residents told AFP they had heard the sounds of more fighting by the evening, after a tense but quieter day.

“There are detonations of bombs. The army is pounding the positions of the M23,” said one resident of a village outside the commercial hub of Rugari.

AFP correspondents in Goma saw two fighter planes and two combat helicopters fly overhead Wednesday.

Officials said Tuesday that the DRC’s military used newly deployed jets to bombard M23 positions in the east of the country, as some residents fled across the border. 

A mostly Congolese Tutsi group, the M23 first leapt to prominence in 2012 — briefly capturing the main city in eastern DRC, Goma, before being driven out.

As fighting has escalated, the town of Rugari is thought to be near the current frontlines, 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Goma.

The UN said Wednesday that at least 188,000 people had fled their villages since October 20, the start of the new M23 offensive.

At least 16,500 have taken refuge in neighbouring Uganda.

After lying dormant for years, M23 took up arms again in late 2021 claiming the DRC had failed to honour a pledge to integrate them into the army, among other grievances. 

The group has won a string of victories against the Congolese army in North Kivu province in recent weeks, dramatically increasing the territory under their control. 

Fresh advances prompted the UN peacekeeping mission there to increase its alert level and boost support for the Congolese army.

The family of Egypt’s jailed dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah, who is refusing food and water, demanded information on his health Wednesday amid what they said were “rumours of force-feeding”.

International concern has mounted since Abdel Fattah, 40, escalated his months-long hunger strike by also declining liquids since Sunday, the start of the UN climate summit COP27 hosted by Egypt.

His UK-born mother Laila Soueif has made daily trips this week to the Wadi al-Natroun prison, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Cairo, but has received no update or proof of life.

The activist’s sister Mona Seif said in a tweet their mother was back at the prison Wednesday, where “they wouldn’t take mama’s letter to Alaa.”

“Does that mean he is in a state where he can’t receive a letter? Or is he not in this prison anymore?” Seif said. “This uncertainty can only be settled if the Egyptian authorities gave us answers!”

A key figure of the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, Abdel Fattah gained British citizenship this year.

The dissident’s aunt, novelist Ahdaf Soueif, tweeted that “we cannot explain two days without letters”, and said that the family was concerned about “rumours of force-feeding and of sleep-inducing drugs”.

She demanded that the British-Egyptian activist be moved to the Qasr al-Aini University Hospital, Cairo’s largest state medical facility, and given access to lawyers and British embassy officials.

Abdel Fattah, a veteran pro-democracy and rights campaigner, is serving a five-year prison sentence for “spreading false news” by sharing a Facebook post about police brutality.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have all voiced concern and called for his release.

United Nations rights chief Volker Turk has warned Abdel Fattah’s “life is in great danger”.

– ‘Urgent’ concern –

Upon his return from the global climate summit, Sunak told the British parliament Wednesday that his “deep concern… grows more urgent by the day”.

“We will continue to press the Egyptian government to resolve the situation,” he added.

“We want to see Alaa freed and reunited with his family as soon as possible.”

Rights group Amnesty International on Wednesday said that British authorities “must obtain proof of life and help secure his release”, warning that “Egypt’s authorities are responsible for his life”.

The only update in recent days has come from Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, the COP27 president.

Shoukry told media at the summit that Abdel Fattah — whose dual citizenship Cairo does not recognise — has access to “all the necessary care in prison”.

Macron said after meeting Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi Monday that he had received an assurance that Cairo is “committed to ensuring” Abdel Fattah’s health “is preserved”, and that the situation will be resolved “in the coming weeks and months”.

But Ahdaf Soueif, the aunt, said that “the prison hospital is probably not equipped to care for the rare case of a patient who has been living for six months on 100 calories a day” in his hunger strike.

Activists at COP27 have posted widely on Twitter under the hashtag #FreeAlaa, and several speakers have ended with the words “you have not yet been defeated” — the title of the jailed activist’s book.

Human rights groups estimate that some 60,000 political prisoners are held in Egypt, many of them in brutal conditions and overcrowded cells, accusations which Cairo rejects.