Forty-two people have died in flooding in Niger since the start of the rainy season in June, most of them in northern desert areas, according to a UN report released Thursday. Nearly 205,000 people have been affected by the floods, which have destroyed 16,992 houses, said the report by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ...

Human rights activists on Thursday hit out at Morocco's navy for firing on a boat that was carrying migrants to Spain, in an assault that killed a 22-year-old student. Hayat Belkacem died and three other Moroccans were wounded -- one critically -- when a speedboat they were in was hit by live rounds on Tuesday in waters off the Moroccan locality ...

A cholera outbreak in Niger has killed 67 people since July out of thousands of recorded cases, the UN said Thursday, citing health ministry figures. The epicentre is the southern Maradi region, near the border with Nigeria where a separate outbreak has claimed nearly 100 lives, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said. Fifty-five of the deaths w ...

Wetlands, among the world's most valuable and biodiverse ecosystems, are disappearing at alarming speed amid urbanisation and agriculture shifts, conservationists said Thursday, calling for urgent action to halt the erosion. We are in a crisis, Martha Rojas Urrego, head of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, told reporters in Geneva, warning of ...