Boko Haram in Benin Confirms the Islamist War moving into the Rest of West Africa

Bokok Haram  has now moved Islamist Civil war from Nigeria into Both Cameroon and Benin. This confirms the strategic move of the Islamist movement into the war - Jihad - phase in West Africa.

They appear to have been setting up Dawa schools into remote Muslim communities, and to eventually radicalize them. Based on this premise, and Boko Haram's past geographical network, terrorism analysts need to begin looking into Dawas being set up in

• Burkina Faso
• Ghana
• Togo
• Liberia

Ivory Coast is a different Story; they fought their religious civil war already, but watch for foreign Dawa s being planted into Muslim tribal areas, and watch for the persoecuation of Christian's in those areas.

-Shimron Issachar

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A mosque and Islamic school have been attacked and set alight in the southern Nigerian city of Benin, police say.

• A Nigerian Red Cross spokesman told the BBC that five people had been killed and six injured.
• It follows a separate attack on a different mosque in the city on Monday.
• In recent weeks, southerners, who are mostly Christians or animists, have been the targets of deadly attacks by the Islamist Boko Haram group, which operates in the mainly Muslim north.
• A leader of the Hausa community in Benin told the BBC's Hausa Service that 7,000 northerners were seeking refuge in police and army barracks in the city.

The Nigerian Red Cross confirmed to the BBC that they were registering northerners at police stations and  Two cars at the centre housing the mosque and Islamic school were also torched, police said.

The attack is the latest in a spiral of sectarian violence that has seen many southerners living in the north flee their homes.

• The BBC's Naziru Mikailu in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, said the latest violence started in Benin on Monday when a group attacked a mosque, leaving 10 people injured.
• Then, in Gusau, capital of northern Zamfara state, youths attacked a church. Police made 19 arrests, our reporter says.
• Back in Benin on Tuesday, a mosque and Islamic centre were attacked and set alight in a different area from Monday's attack. Police told the BBC that 10 people had been arrested.
• A group of youths tried to attack a Hausa community leader's house but it was defended by Hausa youths and the police then intervened, our reporter says.

Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka blamed the violence of recent months on leaders who put their own religion above national unity. He said the situation was not dissimilar to the one that existed before the last civil war that erupted in Biafra in the 1960s.

"We see the nation heading towards civil war. We know that the civil war was preceded by problems - serious killings on both sides of the regional divide," he told the BBC.

"When you get a situation when a bunch of people can go into a place of worship and open fire through the windows you've reached a certain dismal watershed in the life of that nation.

"There's no question at all, whatsoever. Those who have created this faceless army have lost control of that army."

The latest unrest comes on the second day of a general strike over the removal of a fuel subsidy.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets in many cities in protest about the doubling of the price of petrol since the beginning of the year. Six people died in the unrest on Monday.

The Rest @ African Seer

Libyan African Aviation Holding Company

This is an interesting Expanding airline. Note that they have a Hub in Benin.

-Shimron

Libyan Airlines (Arabic: الخطوط الجوية الليبية‎; transliterated: al-Khutut al-Jawiyah al-Libiyah), formerly known as Libyan Arab Airlines,[1] is the national flag carrier airline of Libya, based in Tripoli.

It operates scheduled passenger and cargo services within Libya and to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Its main base is Tripoli International Airport.[2]

• The airline carried 885,000 passengers in 2007, of which 40% travelled on domestic services. It ­expects to carry 950,000 passengers this year.
• Libyan Airlines and Afriqiyah Airways, Libya's other state carrier, have recently been grouped under Libyan African Aviation Holding Company, an umbrella organisation created to oversee a co-ordinated development of Libya's air transport sector.[3]
• The airline is also a member of the Arab Air Carriers Organization and the International Air Transport Association.
  

Fleet
Airbus A300B4-600R2
Airbus A320-2003(6 orders)

Operated by Nouvelair
Airbus A330-200 (4 orders)
Airbus A350 XWB (4 orders)
Bombardier CRJ 900ER 5
Fokker F27 2
Fokker F28 1

Source: Wikipeida

Benin Men Commit Ritual Murders Ahead of Elections in Togo

LOME, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Six grisly murders in Togo in which the victims were decapitated and drained of their blood have raised fears of a resurgence of ritual killings ahead of parliamentary elections in the West African state next month.

The serial killings occurred last weekend in the southern Vo and Lacs prefectures, east of the capital Lome. The victims included a 12-year-old boy and a 63-year-old woman and their severed heads were carried off by the killers.

The discovery of the headless corpses has shocked Togolese and triggered a wave of speculation that the killings were ritual murders. This is a practice still found in parts of Africa in which people kill to obtain body parts and blood in the belief they will bring social success and political power. Police announced the arrest of four suspects, including one from neighbouring Benin, the West African home of the ancient Voodoo religion, who confessed to killing the 12-year-old boy.

Togo holds legislative elections on Oct. 14, and international observers hope they will strengthen the weak grip of democracy in the small former French colony, which like Benin is wedged between Nigeria and Ghana on the Gulf of Guinea.

In a society where traditional beliefs still have influence, some Togolese saw a link between the killings and the ambitions of aspiring candidates for next month's polls.

"Some of these deputies are ready to do anything to keep their seats and you hear that they're carrying out sacrifices," said Joel Attigan, a geography student.

Others saw the murders as linked to a desire for social advancement.
"There are too many young rich people in Togo these days. These crimes are linked to these kind of people, who sometimes use human sacrifices to obtain their goals," said Da Mensa, the manager of a bar and restaurant in Lome.

Togo's media have joined the feverish debate, blaming shadowy religious sects in Togo and Benin.

"We are in Africa, and spilled human blood can reveal many things," the newspaper Le Magnan Libere said, referring to the witchcraft practice of using blood or body parts for divining or influencing the future.

The police have beeen cautious about confirming the ritual killing hypothesis.
But they said the arrested Benin citizen, Roger Kodjo Hounguiya, had confessed that he was working for a fellow countryman, Jean Goudjo, wanted in Benin for grisly murders involving mutilation.

The European Union, which froze most of its aid to Togo in 1993 citing the poor democratic record of then President Gnassingbe Eyadema, is sending electoral observers to the polls next month. Eyadema died in 2005 and his son is now president.

The Rest @ Reuters Africa