African Briefs

Nearly 50 killed in boat accident
LILONGWE – At least 47 people thought to be illegal migrants from east Africa died when their boat capsized in Lake Malawi, Malawi police said yesterday.
The group was apparently trying to enter northern Malawi from Tanzania, police said. Many on board may have been Ethiopians, they added.

‘We have buried them in a mass grave because the bodies were in a bad condition. We are still searching for more on the lake,’ Karonga district officer in charge, Teresa Nankhuni, told Reuters.Officers said they believed the boat capsized on Monday night. Bodies were discovered on Wednesday floating in the water.Burundi journalist gets lifeBUJUMBURA – A Burundian court sentenced a journalist and 13 others to life in prison on terrorism charges on Wednesday for a November attack launched from across the Tanzanian border, a ruling criticised by media watchdogs.The sentence against journalist Hassan Ruvakuki, who works for French radio station RFI’s Swahili service and local broadcaster Bonesha FM, is ‘startling’ and ‘makes a mockery of the rights of the press in Burundi’, Alexandre Niyungeko, head of the Burundian Journalists’ Union, told AFP.Ruvakuki was accused of planning an attack by an armed group on the eastern Burundian town of Cankuzo that left dozens dead and spreading news of it after.DRC warns of more fightingNEW YORK – The Democratic Republic of Congo warned on Wednesday that the presence of Rwandan fighters in an anti-government mutiny could unleash new hostilities between the neighbours. DR Congo Foreign Minister Raymond Tshibanda said in a letter to the UN Security Council that evidence of Rwandan involvement meant the crisis in the east of his country was ‘evolving dangerously toward a rupture of the peace’ between the two.