Hundreds have queued outside a mortuary in Freetown to search for their loved ones, following a mudslide on Monday that has claimed at least 400 lives. A further 600 people are still unaccounted for, according to the Red Cross, which has continued to search for bodies buried in the debris. Recovery efforts have been hampered by the country’s dangerous terrain, a lack of equipment and the sheer scale of the tragedy.A week of national mourning commenced on Wednesday, with a minute’s silence held at midday in memory of the victims. A national emergency has been declared and the country’s security level has been moved to three, the highest status. The deputy health minister, Madina Rahman, said Freetown was now facing a possible cholera outbreak, as a result of the contaminated water pooling in the streets and bodies lying in the open.The UN is also assessing the threat of another mudslide or further flooding. Linnea Van Wagenen, working for the UN in Sierra Leone, said on Tuesday: “We have the mountains and very steep hillsides. [It’s very hard to] access these areas, where it’s muddy, it’s slippery – there’s a risk of a second landslide. We’re not sure how this massive landslide has affected the ground around it.”(theguardian)…[+]

Lebanon has joined a number of other Arab states in scrapping a law that allowed rapists to escape punishment by marrying their victims. Lawmakers voted on Wednesday to repeal an article of the Lebanese penal code that deals with rape, assault, kidnapping and forced marriage. Jordan and Tunisia banned similar laws this year. Article 522 includes a provision that allows rapists to avoid criminal prosecution if they marry their victim. Its abolition follows a lengthy campaign by activists.

“Congratulations to women in Lebanon,” the NGO Abaad wrote on its Facebook page. “Today’s win is a victory for the dignity of women. It is no longer possible to escape punishment for rape and sexual acts carried out by force and coercion.” Abaad campaigned against article 522 for more than a year. It posted billboards of women in bloodied and torn wedding gowns with the caption: “A white dress does not cover the rape.” In April, campaigners hung wedding dresses from nooses at a Beirut seafront.(theguardian)…[+]

Zimbabwe has requested diplomatic immunity for the first lady, Grace Mugabe, after she was accused of assaulting a model at a hotel in Johannesburg, according to a statement from South Africa’s police ministry. The suspect’s lawyers “and her government representatives made verbal representations … that the suspect wished to invoke diplomatic immunity cover”, it said. The statement also confirmed that the wife of the 93-year-old Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe remains in South Africa, despite reports that she had returned home after failing to turn herself in to face charges of assault. Mugabe is accused of attacking 20-year-old Gabriella Engels with an electrical extension cord after the model went to see the Mugabes’ sons Robert and Chatunga at the Capital 20 West Hotel in Johannesburg’s upmarket Sandton district on Sunday.(theguardian)…[+]

New details have emerged about the abductions of three dissident Saudi princes in what appears to be a systematic state-run Saudi government programme to kidnap defectors and dissidents. The three, all members of the Saudi regime before they became involved in peaceful political activities against the government in Riyadh, were kidnapped and taken against their will to Saudi Arabia between September 2015 and February 2016. Their story, which was originally reported by the Guardian in March 2016, is the subject of a BBC Arabic documentary to be broadcast this week called Kidnapped! Saudi Arabia’s Missing Princes. The most senior of the princes, Prince Sultan bin Turki, was kidnapped by the Saudis on 1 February 2016 together with about 20 members of his entourage, many from western countries. In the documentary, two westerners in the prince’s entourage describe the moment they realised the plane they were travelling on was not landing in Cairo as planned, but had instead been diverted to Riyadh.The westerners describe Prince Sultan screaming and fighting with the Saudi flight attendants, who produced concealed weapons in order to subdue him and control the other passengers as the plane touched down.(theguardian)…[+]

Zimbabwe’s first lady, Grace Mugabe, is to appear in court in South Africa on Tuesday after handing herself in to police over allegations that she assaulted a woman in a Johannesburg hotel. Mugabe, 52, allegedly attacked Gabriella Engels, 20, with an extension cord, wounding her forehead and the back of her head.

Mugabe went to a police station on Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reported. According to the local eNCA TV channel, she will appear in court later on Tuesday. The police minister Fikile Mbalula said Mugabe would appear at Wynberg magistrates court on Tuesday afternoon. “She’s not under arrest because she co-operated and handed herself over to the police,” he said. Earlier in the day, Mbalula told the local Eyewitness News agency: “If she came here with her diplomatic passport, she’ll have diplomatic immunity. This doesn’t mean she cannot be arrested.” A Zimbabwean intelligence source said Mugabe was travelling on a normal passport. “She was here on business,” the source told Reuters. Pictures on social media appear to show Engels bleeding in Capital 20 West hotel in the upmarket district of Sandton.(theguardian)…[+]

The hunt for survivors of a devastating mudslide on the outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital has continued, with 270 bodies recovered so far, according to the mayor of Freetown. A mass burial will be held later today to free up space in the city’s central morgue, which has been overwhelmed with bodies. A national emergency has been called after the city suffered heavy flooding, thought to be the worst in Africa over the past two decades. The country’s interior minister, Paolo Conteh, warned that thousands of people were still missing.At least a hundred houses were hit when a hillside in Regent, a mountainous town 15 miles east of Freetown, collapsed in the early hours of Monday morning. Some buildings were completely submerged.Red Cross representative Foray K Marah said on Monday evening that scores of bodies had been recovered but that there is no way to identify them. “The central hospital is completely overwhelmed so we’ve begun sending them to other hospitals as well. The other big problem is that many people have been left homeless and need shelter, clothing, blankets. We’re trying to do what we can. We’ll see how things continue to play out over the day. For now we’re helping to collect the dead.”(Telegraaf)…[+]

The Home Office has granted refugee status to a prominent Nigerian LGBT activist, ending a 13-year battle over her right to remain in the UK. Aderonke Apata, 50, says she knew she was gay from the age of 16 and was persecuted in Nigeria. She has been recognised internationally for her human rights work, and recently received Attitude magazine’s Pride award. Apate arrived in the UK in 2004 but did not immediately claim asylum on the grounds of her sexuality. Until 2010, lesbian, gay and bisexual asylum seekers were often forcibly removed to their home countries if it was deemed safe for them to “live discreetly”.

In 2012 she filed an asylum claim but was considered by the Home Office to be lying about being in a lesbian relationship. Apate appealed, but was told by the judge: “What is believed is that you have presented yourself as a lesbian solely to establish a claim for international protection in an attempt to thwart your removal … It is considered that your actions are not genuine and simply a cynical way of gaining status in the UK.” A new appeal was scheduled for late July. Apate’s legal team gave notice that 11 prominent witnesses, including the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and the Lib Dem peer Liz Barker, would be attending. The Home Office requested an adjournment and then earlier this month sent a letter to Apate saying officials had decided to grant her refugee status.(theguardian)…[+]

Traffickers used beatings and the threat of shooting to force more than 100 refugees, including children who could not swim, to jump into heavy seas off the coast of Yemen last week, survivors have said. At least 50 people were killed. The incident is the latest in a series in which hundreds, possibly thousands of refugees have died.

Survivors contacted in Yemen told the Guardian that crewmembers armed with AK47s told around 120 men, women and children that they would not be able to land them on beaches in Yemen and forced them to jump into the water while still at least 1km offshore at dawn on Tuesday. The boat had left Bosaso, a port in Somaliland on the Gulf of Aden, around 16 hours earlier, the survivors said. Fifty-one refugees, mostly Somalis trying to reach Europe, have been confirmed dead, and the toll is expected to rise.

“The smugglers told us it was very risky to approach the shore as Yemeni authorities had arrested smugglers there. So they told us to jump. Some people shouted and begged the smugglers to take us closer, but they refused and started beating people with sticks. They had AK47s, so everyone was afraid to argue, and people started jumping into the sea,” Abdirahim Ilmi Aano, 25, a labourer in Bosasso, told the Guardian.(theguardian)…[+]

Politicians from all sides have rounded on Donald Trump for failing explicitly to condemn white supremacy groups or use the term domestic terrorism after a woman was killed when a car smashed into anti-racism protesters at the weekend. The US Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the death.

On Saturday the president condemned hatred and violence “on many sides” in his remarks, but did not directly single out the white supremacists, whose attempt to hold a major rally in Charlottesville, Virginia resulted in the governor, Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, calling a state of emergency. Disorder including clashes with counterprotesters left more than 30 injured.

The woman who was killed by the car that ploughed into counter-protesters was named as 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a legal assistant who had repeatedly championed civil rights issues on social media. A 20-year-old man, James Fields, of Maumee, Ohio, has been charged with her murder. On Sunday photographs taken earlier on Saturday surfaced that showed Fields standing with a neo-Nazi group and holding a shield emblazoned with a far-right emblem.(theguardian)…[+]

Concerns are mounting over the civilian cost of the US-led coalition’s campaign to reclaim Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, with reports of airstrikes killing and wounding hundreds of Syrians.

The reports, which cannot be definitively confirmed but are considered reliable by UN officials, raise questions about the US commitment to protect civilians in the battle amid the reported loosening of the rules of engagement under President Donald Trump. “The coalition is not taking any precautions to avoid civilian casualties,” said Aghid al-Khodr, a senior editor at Sound and Picture, an organisation that maintains a network of clandestine correspondents in the Isis capital.

“The number of Daesh [Isis] fighters in the city does not exceed 500, but if they’re going to destroy a residential building and wipe out all the people in it every time they want to kill a Daesh fighter then they will be liberating the city from both Daesh and the residents,” he said. The battle to liberate Raqqa, the capital of the terrorist group’s self-proclaimed caliphate, began two months ago with incursions into the city by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a confederation dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Arab auxiliary militia. The campaign is backed by the US-led coalition, which arms the SDF and has launched hundreds of airstrikes in support of the ground forces. (theguardian)…[+]