Children in the Central African Republic (CAR) are paying a heavy price for the troubles faced by the country, and their plight could worsen without urgent international support, said a senior official with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Peacekeepers serving with the joint United Nations-African Union mission in Sudan’s war-wracked Darfur region have intervened in deadly tribal clashes, bringing the situation under control. The fighting between the Zaghawa and Birgid tribes near Shangil Tobaya in North Darfur state killed two people, with six people from both sides sustaining injuries. Four people who were critically wounded were taken by helicopter to El Fasher by the mission, known as UNAMID, for treatment at a Government hospital.

How can civil society most effectively work for peacebuilding? This working paper from the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding presents the findings of a comparative research project which analysed the performance of civil society in regards to protection, monitoring, advocacy, socialisation, social cohesion, facilitation, and service delivery in situations of war and armed conflict.

The Guinean Prime Minister, Kabine Komara, has hailed the decision of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to investigate the 28 Sept massacre of protesters in Conakry by elements of the Guinean military. In a broadcast to the nation Wednesday, the Prime Minister said the decision would make it possible to identify all those involved in the killing of civilians who were protesting an alleged plan by mili tary leader Moussa Dadis Camara to transmute to a civilian leader by participating in the forthcoming presidential election.

The US is preparing to give Mali's army millions of dollars worth of military hardware to help them fight al-Qaeda's North African branch. Trucks, powerful communication devices and clothing are among $5m (£3m) of equipment being handed over.

More than 30,000 Angolans are stranded in transit camps after being abruptly deported from the Democratic Republic of Congo and there are growing fears of a cholera outbreak as the rainy season begins.?? The families - around two thirds of whom had official refugee status in DRC - were booted out earlier this month in retaliation for Angola expelling thousands of Congolese migrants in recent years.

Officials are warning renewed fighting is likely between two rival clans in breakaway Somaliland, where they are reported to have amassed a large number of weapons and positioned hundreds of militiamen near disputed farmland in Gabiley region. "We are afraid new conflict could break out any time," a police officer, who requested anonymity, told IRIN, adding that the clans had at least 1,000 militiamen, armed with automatic rifles such as AK47 rifles and BKM handguns, in or near the Elberdale farmland area.

The international court has urged the Ugandan authorities to arrest the indicted Sudanese President, Omar Al-Bashir if he comes to Kampala next week for the African Union meeting. The International Criminal Court statement comes a day after President Yoweri Museveni said Uganda will not execute the international arrest warrant on President Al Bashir at the summit.

Nigeria's main rebel group has ended its 90-day ceasefire with the government and threatened to resume attacks in the oil-producing southern region. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said in an emailed statement that it would resume "hostilities against the Nigerian oil industry, the Nigerian armed forces and its collaborators" on Friday.

The pace of diplomacy on Sudan is increasing, with talks set to resume on Darfur and active engagement by the African Union, the United Nations, and the United States in efforts to move Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement forward as it approaches the last year of a projected 6-year interim period. But, says veteran Sudan analyst John Ashworth, in fact the agreement "is not Comprehensive, nor Peace, nor an Agreement. Its failure could ignite a new war even more deadly than the two previous conflicts in Southern Sudan.

Comparing the hundreds of thousands of forcibly displaced civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres on Friday urged the international community not to forget the Congolese in their hour of need.

On 8 October, seven Sahrawi advocates from Western Sahara were arrested by Moroccan police at the Mohamed V Airport in Casablanca, Morocco and remain in an undisclosed location. The advocates were returning from a trip to Algeria where they visited Sahrawi refugee camps in the southwest of the country.

Unidentified gunmen shot and wounded three peacekeepers, two critically, from the joint African Union-United Nations mission in Darfur (UNAMID) in an attack on Saturday in the war-ravaged region on the western flank of the Sudan. The police unit came under fire near Zalingei, West Darfur, while escorting a UNAMID garbage truck. The armed men stole the police vehicle and escaped.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) sounded the alarm on the worsening humanitarian situation in the Horn of Africa today, noting that nearly five million children under the age of five in the region are now hungry. This marks an increase of 1 million since May, while the number of people in need of emergency assistance in the region has also risen, climbing from 20 million earlier this year to 24 million, the agency said.

The Congolese government's military operation in eastern Congo, Kimia II, backed by United Nations peacekeepers and aimed at neutralizing the threat from a Rwandan Hutu militia group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), has resulted in an unacceptable cost for the civilian population, said 84 humanitarian and human rights groups in the Congo Advocacy Coalition.

The Government of Burundi should immediately evaluate the claims of up to 400 Rwandan asylum seekers and stop all efforts to coerce them to leave the country, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch also called on Rwandan authorities to stop pressuring Burundi to force the asylum seekers to return to Rwanda.

Some 260 Sudanese refugees jailed for entering Lebanon illegally have been deproted, according to a Sudanese Embassy official. The refugees were sent back on a Sudan Airways flight, the official said. In a statement to the Sudan News Agency, head of Sudan’s Expatriates Affairs Amin Taha al-Girain said 2,871 Sudanese nationals had also been voluntarily returned from Libya.

This Report is on the recent Genocide at Bundu Waterfront in the Township axis of Port Harcourt in the Rivers State of Nigeria. The Report is presented by the National Union of Tenants of Nigeria and based, not only on newspaper publications, but more on the personal experiences by officials of the union who visited the scene and equally had interviews with leaders of the affected community who confirmed the incident and gave useful information to the union.

This latest policy briefing from the International Crisis Group, focuses on the events of 28 September – when security forces killed at least 160 people in a crackdown on opposition to the military regime – and their implications for the stability of the country and the sub-region. It discusses dangerous fractures within the military and signs that various members are raising ethnic militias, warns that Guineans will not accept an attempt by the army to remain in power and calls for the end of military rule and a re-opening of the democratic transition process.

In the wake of recent events in Guinea and in light of information related to the alleged commission of crimes under ICC jurisdiction, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has confirmed that the situation in Guinea is under preliminary examination by his Office.