Hundreds of Rwandan refugees who were living in eastern Congo since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda were repatriated on May 17, the UNHCR said, after Rwandan-backed rebels seized key parts of the region. 

Most of the refugees were women and children, and 360 of them crossed the border in buses provided by Rwandan authorities and were escorted by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, and aid group Save the Children, local authorities said. The goal is to repatriate 2,000 people, UNHCR said. 

Chad’s former prime minister and opposition leader Succès Masra was taken into custody by security forces on May 16, in what his party called an “abduction.” 

Public prosecutor Oumar Mahamat Kedelaye said Masra was arrested in connection with an intercommunal clash in Chad’s southwest province of Logone Occidental that killed 42 people. 

Hundreds of supporters of ex-President Evo Morales marched toward Bolivia’s top electoral court on May 16 to push for their leftist leader’s candidacy in presidential elections later this year, a rally that descended into street clashes as police tried to clear out a group of demonstrators. 

The confrontations come in response to a ruling by Bolivia’s Constitutional Court that blocks Morales, the nation’s first Indigenous president who governed from 2006 until his ouster in 2019, from running again in Aug. 17 elections. 

An Australian man who was captured by Russian forces while fighting alongside Ukraine has been sentenced to 13 years in a maximum-security prison, Russian-installed prosecutors have said. 

Oscar Jenkins, 33, was convicted in a Russian-controlled court in occupied eastern Ukraine of fighting in an armed conflict as a mercenary. 

Mr. Jenkins, a teacher from Melbourne, was captured last December in the Luhansk region. 

Pjeter Shala, known during wartime by the nom de guerre Commander Wolf, launched his appeal on Thursday and Friday at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague against a guilty verdict for the arbitrary detention and torture of at least 18 wartime detainees and the murder of one prisoner. 

The Specialist Prosecutor’s Office and the legal counsel representing the victims’ interests in the trial urged the court to confirm the 18-year sentence. 

Delegations from Russia and Ukraine have sat down for their first direct talks in three years, but hopes for a breakthrough at the meeting in Turkiye remain dim. 

Officials from Russia, Ukraine, and the United States arrived in Istanbul on Friday morning for the talks, the first since shortly after Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor in February 2022. 

Indian security forces have killed 31 Maoist rebels in what the country’s home minister called the “biggest operation against Naxalism”. 

Amit Shah said on social media that the operation took place on Karreguttalu Hill on the border of Chhattisgarh and Telangana. 

“The hill on which the red terror once reigned, today the tricolor is flying proudly … Our security forces completed this biggest anti-Naxal operation in just 21 days and I am extremely happy that there was not a single casualty in the security forces in this operation,” he wrote on X.  

President Donald Trump's senior adviser for Africa said he spoke with the presidents of Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo about a draft peace deal this week, as Washington seeks to end a decades-long conflict in the region. 

The United States is awaiting final feedback due this weekend from Rwanda and Congo on the draft agreement, Massad Boulos told Reuters in an interview in Washington. 

He added that there may still be amendments and adjustments, but he hopes it can be concluded in coming weeks. 

Mauritania's former president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on corruption charges following an appeal to a Nouakchott court by both the state and Aziz's defense against a sentence imposed in 2023. 

Abdel Aziz led the West African country for a decade after coming to power in a 2008 coup, followed by an election a year later. He was an ally of Western powers fighting Islamist militants in the Sahel region. 

At least 115 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in a wave of Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, as indirect ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas continue. 

At least 61 people were killed overnight and early in a barrage of attacks on the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, according to local health officials. In Jabalia in northern Gaza, an Israeli strike on al-Tawbah medical clinic killed at least 15 people and wounded several others, the health ministry said. Israel’s army also attacked three hospitals in north and south Gaza.