"This is no way to run a peacekeeping operation. Morale is low, we cannot pay our troops and the [Sudanese] government makes sure we are unable to do our job." - Senior African Union official

Sources on the ground indicate that the government of Sudan is indiscriminately bombing civilian-occupied villages in rebel-held North Darfur, Human Rights Watch said today. The bombing campaign comes as Khartoum is threatening to eject African Union peacekeepers and stymieing efforts to deploy a U.N. force to the region, and should trigger sanctions against senior Sudanese government officials.

Where once the bunkers and razor wire of an African Union (AU) peacekeeping base dominated the plain in front of Tawilla town, now only a small water tower reveals the whereabouts of their camp, swallowed up in a sea of makeshift shelters.

Lasting solutions are needed for the humanitarian problems of gender-based violence, refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), a senior United Nations (UN) official said on Tuesday. This would help restore peace and stability to the region, Ibrahima Fall, the Special Representative for the UN Secretary-General for the Great Lakes region, said in Nairobi, Kenya, at the opening of a three-day regional conference on peace and security.

A senior commander of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) says peace talks with the Ugandan government could fail if the International Criminal Court (ICC) does not lift indictments against five rebel leaders wanted for crimes against humanity. "The ICC must revoke the indictment," said Vincent Otti, the LRA's second in command, who, with the group's leader, Joseph Kony, and three other commanders, is wanted by the ICC.

In the Israeli discourse, Israel has always been the innocent victim of vicious aggression from its neighbors. This perception of reality has only intensified with its two recent wars - against the Palestinians in Gaza and against Lebanon. On this view, in both cases Israel has manifested its good will - it ended the occupation of the Gaza strip in 2005, just as it ended the occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000.

Ivorian civil society on Monday (September 3) proposed a 24-month transition in Cote d’Ivoire within the backdrop of the UN security council’s session on the Ivorian crisis slated at its New York headquarters, the Ivorian civil society Convention (CSCI) announced in a statement copied Monday to APA.

Some Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees in Nigeria have attributed their seeming reluctance to return home to inadequate incentives, loss of loved ones, insecurity back home and pursuit of education. Since 2004, when the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, launched a voluntary repatriation programme for the thousands of refugees, barely 670 of them have returned home.

A genocide is taking place in Gaza. This morning, 2 September, another three citizens of Gaza were killed and a whole family wounded in Beit Hanoun. This is the morning reap, before the end of day many more will be massacred. An average of eight Palestinian die daily in the Israeli attacks on the Strip. Most of them are children. Hundreds are maimed, wounded and paralyzed.

Nearly half of the 40,000 refugees who fled Togo during post-election violence last year have left refugee camps in Benin and Ghana, and the Togolese government says it plans to repatriate those remaining. The Togolese High Commissioner for Repatriation and Humanitarian Action (HCRHA) said it had repatriated 3,000 refugees and another 1,000 had requested repatriation. Fifteen-thousand have voluntarily returned.

The main parties in Cote d'Ivoire’s conflict were set to gather on Tuesday (September 5) for a fresh round of talks on the faltering peace process ahead of a key United Nations meeting in New York later this month. President Laurent Gbagbo is to meet with rebel New Forces leader Guillaume Soro and the two main opposition leaders, Alassane Ouattara and Henri Konan Bedie.

Armed soldiers shielded behind sandbags stand guard on both ends of the bridge over the River Niger and into Onitsha, a sprawling trading town of more than one million people in southeastern Nigeria. Vehicles entering the city are subjected to searches, ostensibly for weapons and signs of membership in the separatist Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), blamed for a recent series of violent incidents in the city.

Direct talks between Somalia's interim government and rival Islamists have begun in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, with power-sharing high on the agenda. The sides have not met since June when the Union of Islamic Courts seized control of the capital, Mogadishu, and then many central and southern regions.

South Africa says it is investigating reports that 137 women among its delegation to an Aids conference in Canada are applying for refugee status. A total of 151 delegates - including El Salvadorans, Eritreans, Zimbabweans and Ugandans - have applied, a Canadian newspaper reported. An immigration lawyer said the women were facing severe discrimination.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has officially charged former militia leader Thomas Lubanga for forcefully recruiting children as soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo's civil war. Although the war began in 1998, the ICC can only indict Lubanga for crimes committed after the Court's inception in 2002.

Police in Harare have issued a stern warning to the main Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which is planning to hold countrywide protests against poor pay and living conditions this month. On Sunday police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena told the state-controlled Sunday Mail newspaper that police were ready to deal with any unlawful acts after the ZCTUs general council set September 13 as the date for long-awaited street marches.

The report serves as chilling reading on how the people of Zimbabwe who had their houses torn down by the Government Operation Murambatsvina last year, still have no access to housing or other facilities.

Heavy rains pounded the Somali capital early on Tuesday, flooding vast swathes of the city, destroying dozens of makeshift homes and sending thousands fleeing for higher ground. Residents said that many of those hit by the floods were internally displaced people who had fled deadly conflict and crippling drought in their home villages in southern Somalia for the past months.

In recent months, following attacks by armed militias in Chad, hundreds of refugees from Darfur have fled back across the border into Sudan. Too afraid of the militias to return to their villages, they are sheltering in the town of Juguma. Twenty kilometers from the Chadian border, the town of Juguma is like a pregnant woman; it provides and protects and has somewhat expanded.

The Constitutional Court in South Africa has weighed arguments from two parties on the question of whether it is correct to discriminate against refugees who want to enter the private security industry. Twelve refugees have launched a challenge against a provision of the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority Act.