The U.S. military has bolstered a critical hospital in Djibouti as it guards against a potential coronavirus outbreak among troops in East Africa.

Military officials have flown out scores of personnel from Djibouti’s Camp Lemonnier as a precaution and are urging contractors to immediately move into temporary berthing on base, due to mounting numbers of coronavirus cases in the country.

Believed to be the first Vietnamese “boat person” to rise to the rank of general in the U.S. military, Maj. Gen. Lapthe C. Flora took command of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti on Monday.

The only place in the world where fighters linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group are cooperating is in West Africa's sprawling Sahel region, giving the extremists greater depth as they push into new areas, according to the commander of the U.S. military's special forces in Africa.

Pfc. Walter Lewark, 26, of Mountainair, N.M., died Thursday at Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, the Defense Department announced in a statement Friday. He was assigned to Company A, 1st Battalion, 200th Infantry Regiment, 93rd Troop Command out of Rio Rancho, N.M.

Prime Minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, the presidential candidate of Ivory Coast's ruling party, died Wednesday just days after returning from two months of medical treatment in France, where he previously had undergone a heart transplant.

Russian warplanes delivered to support a rebel warlord in Libya and flown by mercenary pilots are now operational, U.S. military officials said Thursday.

The promotion of a Special Forces colonel who approved a 2017 mission in Niger in which four U.S. troops died has been canceled, according to a news report.

Armed men who identified themselves as jihadists attacked farming villages in Mali's central Mopti region this week, killing at least 33 people and wounding at least five, local officials said Friday.

Ethiopia's prime minister on Friday said dissidents he recently extended an offer of peace have "taken up arms" in revolt against the government in a week of deadly unrest that followed the killing of a popular singer.

The Paris appeals court on Friday upheld a decision to end a years-long investigation into the plane crash that sparked Rwanda's 1994 genocide, citing lack of sufficient evidence.

U.S. military officials in Djibouti were preparing Tuesday to lock down Camp Lemonnier indefinitely after a second contractor tested positive for the coronavirus and was evacuated from the East African country.

A military court in Somalia sentenced a police officer to death on Thursday in the fatal shooting of two civilians while enforcing coronavirus restrictions in April.

The U.N. Security Council demanded an "immediate cessation of hostilities" in key conflicts including Syria, Yemen, Libya, South Sudan and Congo on Wednesday to tackle COVID-19 in its first resolution on the new coronavirus.

France announced Wednesday that it is suspending its involvement in a NATO naval operation in the Mediterranean Sea after a standoff with a Turkish warship, amid growing tensions within the military alliance over the conflict in Libya.

Death at the hands of police or in their custody happens at a far greater rate in Kenya than in any other African country, according to reports aggregated by human rights organizations.

ANALYSIS

The U.S. and other Western powers that have largely ignored the conflict now fear a new phase opening in the Middle East’s biggest proxy war, with Russia encroaching on Europe’s southern flank.

The United Arab Emirates has been involved in operating a covert air-bridge to supply weapons to Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar in contravention of a United Nations arms embargo on the North African country, according to a confidential U.N. report.

At least 180 bodies were found in mass graves in northern Burkina Faso with evidence suggesting the government army was involved in large-scale executions turning the area into a "killing field," Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

Russia's top diplomat met Friday with the speaker of the parliament based in eastern Libya to discuss a political settlement for the conflict-stricken country.

Explosions rocked two of Somalia's largest cities on Saturday as officials said a suicide car bomber detonated near the port in Mogadishu and a land mine in a restaurant on the outskirts of Baidoa killed four people.

Six migrants aboard a rescue ship in the Mediterranean Sea tried to kill themselves and others have gotten into fights and threatened fellow passengers and crew members in growing desperation over their inability to find a country willing to take them in, the charity that operates the vessel said Friday.

After decades in a French museum, the skulls of 24 Algerians decapitated for resisting French colonial forces were formally repatriated to Algeria on Friday in an elaborate ceremony led by the teary-eyed Algerian president.

As the coronavirus spreads around the world, countries that have received medical equipment donated by the U.S. for peacekeeping and counterterrorism missions are converting it to civilian use during the pandemic.

Africa's most populous nation is getting almost nothing from its massive oil wealth. A glut of Nigerian oil is at a price level that means fiscal revenue for the continent's biggest economy has cratered.

More than 80 people have been killed in unrest in Ethiopia after a popular singer was shot dead this week, the state-run Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation says. Hachalu Hundessa was buried Thursday amid tight security.

High Court dismissed a bid by the Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association, which argued that cigarettes should be considered essential because they are addictive.

In one of the world's biggest diamond vaults, hidden inside a nondescript office compound on the dusty outskirts of Botswana's capital, the precious stones just keep piling up.

A public health emergency has been declared by the commander of U.S. forces in Djibouti, amid a sharp increase of coronavirus cases in the small east African country.

U.S. field hospitals recently sent to parts of Africa are being used by some countries to treat their growing numbers of coronavirus patients, U.S. Africa Command said Tuesday.

The United Nations raised the alarm Tuesday about the detention and mistreatment of a large group of Egyptian citizens in Libya.

Developing nations face an explosion in coronavirus infections as they exit lockdowns amid worsening outbreaks because the economic cost of remaining shuttered is too great.

African Lion, which was set to start March 23 in Morocco, will now only include activities that do not require lodging troops in close quarters, AFRICOM said.

Sudanese protesters returned to the streets Tuesday to pressure transitional authorities, demanding justice for those killed in the uprising last year that led to the military's ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

Russia has flown warplanes to Libya in a move aimed at propping up a warlord and possibly gaining a permanent foothold in the war-torn country, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

The last such attack by gunmen from Burundi left two people dead in 2018 in the same district.

U.S. Africa Command hasn’t launched an airstrike in Somalia in five weeks, the longest halt in more than a year, as torrential rains complicate the battlefield environment.

One mine was hidden behind a garage door. Another, buried under rubble, was rigged to blow near a gas tank. A particularly diabolical explosive, activists claimed, was taped to an abandoned teddy bear.

Mindful of America's image on a continent where China's influence has grown and where many have felt a distinct lack of interest from the Trump administration in Africa, some U.S. diplomats have tried to control the damage.

A series of swift military reversals in Libya has diminished a warlord's hopes of ruling the North African oil producer and allowed Turkey and Russia to deepen their imprint on one of the world's most strategic regions.