Studio 7 VOA

Zimbabwe Seeks Bids For Collapsed Steelmaker

Zimbabwe is inviting new bidders to take over its collapsed state steelmaker, after rejecting offers from two foreign companies.

In a statement Wednesday, Zimbabwe's Industry and Commerce Minister Welshman Ncube said the bidding process is now open.  He said offers must be submitted to the government by September 24.

In May, Zimbabwe's government rejected bids by South Africa's ArcelorMittal and India's Jindal Steel to take over the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company, or ZISCO.  President Robert Mugabe said those companies were too big.

ZISCO stopped operations in 2008 at the height of Zimbabwe's economic crisis due to a lack of funding.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.

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At Least 8 Killed in More Mogadishu Fighting

More fighting has erupted in Somalia's capital, a day after Islamist militants attacked a hotel and killed more than 30 people.

Witnesses say the insurgent group al-Shabab and pro-government forces exchanged heavy artillery fire in Mogadishu Wednesday.  At least eight people have been reported killed.

Commanders on the government side say al-Shabab tried to seize areas near the presidential palace overnight but were pushed back by soldiers and African Union peacekeepers.

On Tuesday, al-Shabab gunmen attacked a hotel in one of the few parts of Mogadishu under government control.  The Somali ministry of information says 33 people were killed, including four members of parliament.

Medics say more than 80 people have been killed in fighting since Monday, when al-Shabab said it was starting an offensive against the Somali government and African Union troops that support it.

The AU force helps the government maintain control of three key sites -- the airport, seaport, and presidential palace.

The United States strongly condemned the hotel attack.  State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the fact that the attack took place during Ramadan highlights al-Shabab's complete disregard for human life, Somali culture, and Islam.

Al-Shabab and another insurgent group, Hizbul Islam, want to topple the Somali government and establish a strict Islamic state.  The groups have already imposed harshly conservative Islamic law in the areas under their control.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.

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Senegalese Debate Whether President Too Old For Third Term

The director of African Studies at New York’s Columbia University has expressed shock that Senegal’s 84-year-old President, Abdoulaye Wade, is considering running for a third term in the West African country’s 2012 general elections.

Mamadou Diouf said it is impossible to understand that a man over 80 will insist on running as an incumbent seeking a second, seven-year term.

“The first version of the constitution was saying that the president should be elected for two, five-year terms. But, two or three years later, the constitution was amended and the amendment actually created the confusion people are fighting about now,” he said.

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Mr. Wade’s opponents have questioned the rationale behind his decision and have described it as a constitutional coup d’état aimed at ensuring the president’s son is groomed to succeed him.

President Wade has denied he is grooming his son, Karim Wade, to succeed him, despite saying that his son is qualified to run as a presidential candidate in future elections.

President Wade was quoted as saying, “I have no intention of putting my son in my place before I go. But, he is a citizen of Senegal and he is free to stand in elections when he wants to.”

Professor Diouf said there are indications the Senegalese leader is grooming his son to succeed him in the near future.

“The political problem is that it seems he [President Wade] is running in order to restructure again the whole political system among the constitution to allow his son to succeed him,” Diouf said.

President Wade named his 41-year-old son as a minister in the government in May and is believed to be a close and influential adviser to the president.

Some Senegalese constitutional lawyers contend that President Wade’s second term expires in 2012 and is thus, constitutionally, barred from running again.

But, supporters of the Senegalese leader insist Mr. Wade is entitled to seek another term despite his controversial stance.

Diouf said that Mr. Wade will be too old in 2012 to either exercise the functions of a sitting president or completely finish his term of office.

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Sudan Referendum Commission Chairman Seeks Successful Vote Despite Delays

The chairman of Sudan’s Referendum Commission said his organization is working to ensure the scheduled January 9 vote is successful, despite sharp disagreements that have led to delays in some of the activities of the commission.

Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil said the referendum commission has invited several international poll observer groups from the African Union, European Union and United Nations to monitor the referendum in Sudan’s semi-autonomous south.

“As a matter of fact, everything that can be done without the secretariat has been done since we have appointed the Juba (south Sudan’s capital) Bureau, which is the main executive organ of the commission in Juba in the south. In the meantime, work is going on in the preparation of the budget and in the signing of the protocols with a number of international organizations, USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), U.N. and the EU,” he said.

The scheduled January referendum, which forms part of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, will enable residents in the south to decide whether to secede and become an independent nation or remain part of Sudan.

Analysts say sharp disagreements over the secretary general position of the referendum commission between the dominant National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) have led to frequent delays in the preparations ahead of the vote.

Chairman Khalil denied that the SPLM has agreed to allow the NCP to name the secretary-general of the referendum commission.

“That’s not true. As far as I’m concerned, neither the SPLM nor the NCP names the secretary-general. All this is just confusion. This is a purely technical matter neither party has got anything to do with it. I have made a survey of a number of people eligible for the post,” Khalil said.

He attributed the delay in naming the secretary-general of the referendum commission to what he described as the SPLM’s parochial and a confrontational stance.

Officials of the SPLM have insisted that the secretary general should come from the semi-autonomous south after President Omar Hassan al-Bashir named Khalil as chairman of the referendum commission.

Khalil told VOA the commission is making adequate preparations to ensure a credible vote.

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Analysts Monitor New African Oil States for Corruption

Human rights organizations and other monitoring groups are keeping close tabs on frameworks to manage oil revenues in several African countries that are hoping to become major petroleum producers. The newcomers to an often opaque and corrupt sector of Africa's economy include Sao Tome, Ghana and Uganda.

New York-based Human Rights Watch is pressing the new government in the tiny West African country Sao Tome and Principe to pursue a better legal framework on oil-related revenues.

Iain Levine oversees the organization's research, including a report issued this week called "An Uncertain Future:  Oil Contracts and Stalled Reform in Sao Tome and Principe."

"The important thing is to maintain the pressure, make the government realize that even though it is a small country and it is a long way away from Western media and so on, that there is a genuine concern about this issue.  The government does have a law on transparency in terms of managing the oil sector, which is important.  It created a series of institutions.  But what has been lacking up to now is political will," he said.

Sao Tome and Principe is no longer part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which seeks to improve transparency on company payments and government revenues from oil, gas and mining.

Analysts are concerned about signature bonus payments for oil exploration in Sao Tome's waters and the business practices of companies working with the Sao Tome government.

Another New York-based organization, Revenue Watch Institute, is monitoring the growing oil sector in nearby Ghana.

Although encouraged by a new oil revenue bill that was introduced in Ghana's parliament, Revenue Watch's Deputy Director Antoine Heuty says the country faces several major problems. "The latest one has been the questions regarding the contract between Kosmos and Exxon, and the sort of uncertainty regarding these awards of contract.  It is not creating a good environment for the country, so that is one issue.  The other, where we feel that the country should do much better, is that the country is not disclosing its contracts.  So that is also creating opportunities for shady deals and for deals that are not following the international best practices.  So clearly there are many areas where Ghana has a lot of work in front of itself," he said.

Oil analysts say Western foreign investment in Ghana might suffer after U.S.-based Kosmos Energy canceled a deal this month to sell its stake in an offshore oil project to ExxonMobil, amid efforts by Ghana's state-owned oil company to purchase the interest with Chinese backing.  Government officials denied that they were discouraging foreign investment in Ghana.

Meanwhile officials in the east African country of Uganda say they hope to start work on their own oil revenue bill soon, but they are dealing with tax disputes over the sale of exploration blocks in the Lake Albert basin.

Iain Levine of Human Rights Watch says African legislators and governments should look to Norway as an example of how to manage oil revenues.

"One is that they have not just spent the money, but they have saved the money to survive through bad times, so you have got responsible management in that sense.  But the critical issue here is processes of transparency, and oversight and accountability to the population, which ensures honesty and good decision making," he said.

An African example of how to manage resource money, Levine says, is Botswana's diamond industry, which has raised living standards across the country and improved government services.

But international monitoring groups warn that most resource driven economies in many parts of Africa so far have been marked by large-scale corruption, endemic poverty and repeated unrest.

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UN Secretary-General 'Outraged' by Congo Rapes, Launches Investigation

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday he is outraged by the rape and assault of more than 150 women by armed militants in eastern North Kivu Province in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Mr. Ban is sending a top U.N. official to investigate the attacks.

Secretary-General Ban said the rapes of Congolese villagers were carried out by armed elements of two rebel groups and cited the attacks as another grave example of the level of sexual violence and the insecurity that plague the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky read Mr. Ban's statement: "The secretary-general reiterates his call on all armed groups in the DRC to lay down their weapons and join the peace process.  The secretary-general further calls on the authorities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to investigate this incident and bring to justice the perpetrators of these crimes and renew efforts to bring an end to insecurity in the eastern part of the country."

Mr. Ban is sending the Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Atul Khare, to the DRC to investigate the attacks.  The U.N.'s Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict, Margot Wallstrom, has been put in charge of the U.N. response.  She said the attacks in North Kivu confirm her findings during a recent visit to the DRC of widespread and systematic rape, and other human rights violations in the country.

According to news reports, the rebel attacks took place between July 30 and August 3.  The United Nations said it has a small peacekeeping base about 30 kilometers from the village.  But according to spokesman Martin Nesirky, rebels blocked access of villagers to a nearby road and they could not report the attacks to outsiders. Nesirky said the peacekeepers learned of the rapes from a medical worker on August 12, two weeks after they began.

"It's a matter for the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to investigate urgently and to bring those responsible to justice," said Nesirky.  "That's clearly a hugely important factor.  I think it's a sign of the gravity of the situation that Assistant Secretary-General Khare will be going immediately to the Democratic Republic of the Congo."

The United Nations is providing medical help to the victims of the attacks.

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Rights Group: Executions Conducted With 'Chilling Speed' in Equatorial Guinea

Four men have been executed in Equatorial Guinea, less than an hour after being convicted of attempting to assassinate the country's president. Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have condemned the executions and the way the trial was carried out.

The four men were executed on Saturday in Malabo, an hour after being sentenced to death by military tribunal. They were convicted of orchestrating an attack on Equatorial Guinea's presidential palace in February 2009. The attack was initially blamed on Nigerian militants.

State radio reported the executions of Jose Abeso Nsue, a former army captain and his deputy Manuel Ndong Anseme, as well as former government employees Alipio Ndong Asumu and Jacinto Michá Obiang. They were rendered from Benin, where they had been living in exile, to Malabo, and held secretly at the city's Black Beach prison.

The government only released information regarding their whereabouts on Saturday, when they had already been executed.

"We had information that while they were in prison they were tortured to extract a confession from them," said Marise Castro, an Amnesty International's researcher for Equatorial Guinea.

She said the men were executed with chilling speed, with no opportunity to appeal against their convictions.

"The sentence was read at between 3 and 3:30. The family of one of the executed men, Jose Abeho, went to the prison to see him as it was his wish to say goodbye to them, and by the time they got there at around 4, they had already been executed," added Castro.

She said swift executions used to be common in Equatorial Guinea. But this is the first case of detainees being put to death immediately following the end of a trial.

"The justice system is really a joke, the penal codes are very old and I think one of the problems is that the judiciary is not independent therefore they cannot implement the law," Castro said.

Amnesty International said physical conditions have improved inside the country's infamous Black Beach prison in recent years. But the treatment of prisoners, which often includes torture and punishments, has not.

"The Equatorial Guinea government must stop torture and must prosecute all those responsible for torture when it happens," stated Castro.

The rights group is calling for the government of Equatorial Guinea to put an end to forced confessions and unfair trials.

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Dozens of Women Gang-Raped in North Kivu Province

The United Nations confirms dozens of women were gang raped over a four-day period earlier this month in eastern North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  It says insecurity is spreading across the region, with armed groups looting and terrorizing local villages. 

The United Nations says insecurity in the DRC's eastern North Kivu Province is spreading, especially in the Walikale Territory.  It says armed groups, including the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda and Mai-Mai groups, have been attacking villages, causing many civilians to flee.  

U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs tells VOA that between July 30 and August 3 the armed groups took control of the town of Luvungi.

During that time, she says they looted peoples' houses and went on a rampage, raping dozens of women in Luvungi and surrounding areas.

"A total of 179 cases of sexual violence were reported by the NGO [non-governmental organization], which now are taking these people in charge medically and also psychologically in the city of Lubonga," said Byrs. "Rape has always been used in the DRC as a weapon of war.  This is unbearable."  

Byrs says there has been an increase in rape and insecurity incidents during the past two months.  She says about 50,000 people have fled their homes during this period, bringing the total of displaced in the region to 100,000.

Byrs says armed gangs also are targeting humanitarian workers and this is seriously hampering relief operations for the civilian population.  She says attacks against humanitarian workers have increased by 50 percent during the past year.

"It is a situation, which is really of concern to humanitarian workers and to the civilian population as well because if we cannot deliver humanitarian assistance, if we cannot treat those people who have been victims of rape and traumatized.  If they cannot get the well needed assistance, in fact they are left by themselves," she said.  

Much of the fighting in North Kivu is precipitated by the gold and tin mines in the area.  Byrs says the armed gangs are fighting to gain control of the mines and their valuable resources.

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Former Ambassador Calls Al-Shabab Attack in Mogadishu Abhorrent

A former U.S. ambassador says Tuesday’s suicide bombing attack on the Muna Hotel in Mogadishu is “another sad day for all Somalis.”  Over 30 people were killed in the attack.

David Shinn, adjunct professor of international affairs at George Washington University, says, “These suicide bombings in particular, which have become a hallmark now of the al Shabaab organization, are tactics that are abhorrent to essentially all Somalis, except for the leaders of al-Shabaab.”

Al-Shabaab recently used similar tactics in attacks in Kampala, Uganda.  Uganda’s been targeted by the militia because its troops are part of the AU force in Somalia.  They were also used last December in a bombing that killed many graduating students at Benadir University in Mogadishu.

“And they’ve done them numerous times before inside Somalia,” he said.

Shinn recently traveled to East Africa and says he spoke with many Somalis, who were now living in Kenya.

“I didn’t encounter anyone who approved of this kind of a tactic, even though some of them may have had some mild sympathies for al Shabaab.  They just saw this as something that was totally un-Somali,” he said.

The former ambassador to Ethiopia goes on to say the attack “shows the… corruption… of Islamic values as it’s being carried out by al Shabaab.”

Young recruits

Nevertheless, Shinn admits that the militant group is successful in recruiting people willing to carry out suicide attacks.

“They tend to be young people, very young people,” he said, “who are very impressionable and very malleable and manipulable (sic), and convincing them that this is something that is good for them personally and perhaps even good for the organization.  And they’ve obviously had considerable success.  That’s very scary that they’re able to do that,” he says.

Shinn says the reason for the success may be due to young Somalis being very poor and unemployed.  “They have no future.  They have nothing,” he said.

Weak Government

The Transitional Federal Government (TFG), the target of Tuesday’s attack, controls very little territory in Somalia.  Many analysts believe the TFG is very weak and would collapse without the support of AU forces.  But Shinn believes al Shabaab has suffered, too.

“These kinds of things I think have had a very negative blowback for al Shabaab,’ he said.  Most Somalis, he says, do not support the group.

“The support for al-Shabaab is quite weak," he said. “The TFG is equally weak, if not weaker.  And as a result, al Shabaab is operating in many parts of the country in something of a vacuum because there is no TFG presence there.”

Shinn says the TFG has failed to convince Somalis that it actually has a “vision” for the country, which it can implement.  Unless it’s able to do that, he says, it will fail to attract the support it needs.

“But to suggest that significant numbers of Somalis approve of al Shabaab I think is just plain inaccurate,” he said.

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Floods Heighten Food Crisis in Niger

Floods in Niger are compounding an already urgent food crisis in the region, as the Niger River reaches its highest level in more than 80 years.

Floods in Niger are worsening the West African country's food crisis, says the communications director for the Red Cross Society of Niger, Amadou Tidjani Adamou.

Adamou says that homes, latrines and rice fields have been destroyed in the recent flooding.

He added that the people living the area rely heavily on the rice fields that have been destroyed, and there will be consequences for the surrounding populations.

In the capital city of Niamey, the Niger River has reached its highest water level since 1929.

According to Oxfam International, a Britain-based aid group, the floods have killed at least six people and left thousands homeless.

The floods are hitting Niger at a time when more than seven million people in the country are already facing severe hunger, according to the United Nations. The heavy rains are not only washing away food reserves, but also roads that are used to deliver emergency supplies to the population, added Oxfam sources.

The World Food Program recently announced that at current funding levels, it will not be able to help feed 60 percent of those facing hunger in Niger.

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Cancer Drugs Force HIV to Mutate to Death

HIV, the AIDS virus, has the ability to change quickly, frustrating efforts to find a vaccine.  However, the apparent advantage of mutation may also be a weakness.

Since HIV was discovered in 1981, scientists have been trying to kill it or render it harmless.  They haven’t been able to kill it so far, and the best drugs available keep the virus at low levels by hindering its replication. But it’s still in the body and can hide in the brain and bone marrow.

Change for change sake

HIV mutates regularly, blocking efforts by the human immune system to stop it. Professor Louis Mansky is director of the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota.

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“HIV has this propensity for rapidly mutating and evolving.  And is really in a lot of ways the main reason why there hasn’t been an effective vaccine developed and why there’s continual problems with drug resistance,” he says.

But new findings suggest that rather than trying to prevent those mutations, they should be sped up.  Researchers used two cancer drugs approved by the government - decitabine and gemcitabine – on HIV in tissue samples in the lab.

“Well, we were specifically looking for drugs that had already been approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) for other purposes.  And we were screening to look for ones that may have been overlooked in the past for anti-HIV activity,” says Mansky.

The need for speed

The cancer drugs had a profound effect on HIV in the tissue samples.

“The drugs do not directly inhibit the virus from replicating.  What they do is to basically cause the virus to elevate its mutation rate.  And through that process, allow it to continue to replicate and basically kill off its infectivity by this process of lethal mutagenesis, which is elevating the mutation rate to the point to where the virus is no longer infectious,” he says.

Simply put, HIV mutates itself to death.  And it happens fairly quickly.

Mansky says the next step is animal studies.  But before that can be done, the cancer drugs, which are administered intravenously, must be converted to pill form.  That’s how most antiretroviral drugs are now taken.  And they must also be shown to not only be effective against HIV, but safe.

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Oxfam Warns International Community of 'Double Disaster' in Niger

Britain-based charity Oxfam says Niger faces a "double disaster" as heavy rains hit the country.  The group said drought had ruined crops in the West African country and what food had grown is now being washed away by floods.

Oxfam says Niger is at the height of a months-long food crisis. An earlier severe drought destroyed crops, and now heavy rains are ruining what little was left.

"It is wiped out many crops and vegetable gardens so it has actually destroyed their one hope, which is having some food that they could sell now on the market or having crops that they could harvest at the end of September, October, so people are extremely desperate," said Oxfam's Caroline Gluck in Niger.  

The United Nations says more than half the country is facing starvation because of the food crisis.  Gluck says more than 150,000 children under five have been treated for malnutrition.

She says heavy rains are wiping out homes, roads, and bridges across the country and submerging crops in water.  The Niger River, which cuts through much of West Africa, is at its highest level for more than 80 years.  

Gluck says Niger is not set up to cope with erratic weather conditions.  Many people, she says, live in adobe-style mud or bamboo huts that do not withstand the rain.

"It is very easy for them to be displaced," noted Gluck.  "They have very little to protect themselves and very little warning that major flooding is about to happen."

Gluck says food, clean water, and medical care are badly needed.  But, she says the Haiti earthquake and Pakistan floods are drawing the world's attention from West Africa.

"Here in Niger it is a different kind of disaster," she added.  "It is a slow-burn disaster, the impact is more gradual, it is not as dramatic.  So you will not see these very intense, dramatic pictures on the television, but it does not mean that the people are suffering any less."

Earlier this month, the United Nations allocated an additional $15 million to deal with the food crisis, bringing total U.N. aid to Niger to $35 million this year.

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Freed Spanish Hostages Return to Barcelona

Two Spanish aid workers have returned to Barcelona after being released by affiliates of the al-Qaida terrorist network who kidnapped them in Mauritania last November. 

Albert Vilalta and Roque Pascual returned to Barcelona, waving to friends and supporters following their release by the group known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

Vilalta used a crutch to help him walk after he was shot in the leg when he tried to escape during their capture nine months ago.  Pascual said he will spend the rest of his life trying to make up to his family what he has put them through.

Both men thanked the Spanish government for securing their release.  Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero says it brings to an end an act of terrorism that never should have happened.

The prime minister says Vilalta and Pascual are free after 268 days in the hands of their kidnappers - nearly nine months of suffering for them and their families.  Mr. Zapatero says the Spanish government increased its political and diplomatic activity alongside its intelligence services to secure their liberation.

The men were kidnapped outside the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, along with another Spaniard who was freed in March.  Their release was cheered by members of the aid group that sponsored the relief convoy from which they were abducted.

Francesc Osan is the director of the aid group Accio Solidaria.

He says the aid group is very happy and will celebrate with champagne.  After nine months, Osan says it is really a reason for happiness.  It is something they have been waiting to hear for a long time that has finally come true.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb says it targeted Spain because it is an ally of the United States and is part of the NATO alliance.  The group is behind a series of bombings and kidnappings across the Sahel.  It says it killed a French hostage in Mali last month after a failed cross-border raid by French and Mauritanian troops.  The group killed a British hostage and an American aid worker last year.

The Spanish government did not discuss the conditions of this release and refused to comment on reports that it paid a ransom.  The release comes just days after Mauritania extradited a Malian who was sentenced for his role in their kidnapping.  That extradition is something the terrorists had reportedly demanded.

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More Than 30 Killed in Mogadishu Hotel Attack

Somalia's al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab group has taken responsibility for a suicide attack on a hotel in Mogadishu that has killed more than 30 people, including seven parliament members.

Al-Shabab spokesman, Ali Mohamud Rage, says members of the group's "special forces" targeted Somali parliament members residing in Muna Hotel in Mogadishu's government-controlled Hamarweyne district.

Rage says al-Shabab fighters were able to easily enter the hotel compound, located near the presidential palace. He claims almost all of the parliament members in the hotel were killed.

It is not known how many lawmakers were inside. But Somalia's Transitional Federal Government says six lawmakers and two government officials were killed during the attack. Reports say another lawmaker subsequently died of wounds in the hospital.

Witnesses tell VOA that three gunmen, dressed as government security forces, entered the hotel by car after killing two security guards. The gunmen then went door-to-door, shooting indiscriminately.<!--IMAGE-->

Government security forces and African Union peacekeeping troops, known as AMISOM, surrounded the building and engaged in an hour-long battle with the militants.  Witnesses say when the gunmen ran out of ammunition, two of the men detonated explosives-laden suicide vests.

The Somali government initially said that its security forces had captured one of the three gunmen. But later, it issued a statement saying that only two men had stormed the hotel. The government says both men died in the suicide bombing.

In addition to the lawmakers and government officials, more than two dozen others, including civilians and several government troops, were killed. The director of a local community radio station reportedly died after being struck by a stray bullet as he watched the battle from a nearby rooftop.

Tuesday's attack follows al-Shabab's warning that it is planning a "massive war" against African Union troops in Mogadishu. About 6,000 soldiers from Uganda and Burundi make up the peacekeeping force, which arrived in 2007 with a mandate to protect the U.N.-backed government and key installations.  

Three years of fighting between peacekeepers and Islamist insurgents have caused thousands of civilian deaths and prompted hundreds of thousands of others to flee Mogadishu.

Despite repeated demands by al-Shabab to withdraw the peacekeeping force, Uganda is believed to have sent hundreds of reinforcements to the Somali capital in recent days.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for dual suicide attacks on July 11 in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, which the militants said were in retaliation for the country's military involvement in Somalia. The extremist group has also threatened to attack Burundi.

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