Four passengers and three crew were killed Saturday when a cargo plane belonging to a local operator crashed near South Sudan’s capital Juba, the transport minister said. The aircraft crashed shortly after its early morning takeoff in the Kameru neighbourhood around seven kilometres west of the city’s international airport. “There were eight people on board, three passengers and five crew. A single person from among the passengers survived and she is in good health,” Transport Minister Madut Biar Yol told AFP. “The four other passengers and the three crew members are dead.” According to the minister, the crew members were Russian while the passengers were all South Sudanese. The plane owned by local company South West Aviation had been carrying cash to the Wau region in the country’s northwest for Juba-based Opportunity Bank.

Four Malian soldiers were killed and one seriously injured on Saturday when an explosive device detonated as their vehicle drove by in the centre of the country, a military source told AFP . The explosion in the Koro region , near Mali ’s border with Burkina Faso , comes just days after a military putsch against President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. In another development , West African envoys will meet ousted president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on Saturday, a member of the delegation said . The envoys are due to meet members of the junta at 1600 GMT and will then meet Keita , who was detained by the rebel soldiers in Tuesday’s putsch along with a number of other Malian government and army officials , the source from the West African bloc ECOWAS said on condition of anonymity.

Two persons have been confirmed dead while several others sustained different degrees of injuries following a brake failure accident involving an unregistered Land Rover SUV. The SUV reportedly veered off the road and rammed into a building at Panada, Isolo area of Lagos State. According to eyewitnesses, who spoke to Crimefacts ,the vehicle had hit several people along the roadside killing two persons, including an eight year old child. Confirming the incident, the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), Aswani Divisional Police Station, CSP Oyin Francess, said an investigation would be conducted to know the real owner of the vehicle since it is unregistered. She said the vehicle has been evacuated to the police station while the injured persons including the driver have been taken to the hospital for treatment. One eyewitness, Iya Fathia narrated: “I sell goods on that culvert. As the vehicle was approaching with reckless speed, I shouted at him to condemn his manner of driving in fact, he bashed the police patrol van stationed over there and what we saw next was that he was hitting people on the roadside before ramming into that building. It was then we moved closer to the place and realised that several people had been injured. On the spot, we saw a small girl lying lifeless on the floor as well as a man who was identified as Jelili on the floor. “Several people were injured. The girl’s sister was hit and sustained serious injuries. There were another four victims from a family. The accident was so serious that we don’t know the number of people that were injured because the casualties were too much. A woman was selling Dokunu over there, her leg was broken with her small girl also injured. The community has since been thrown into great grief.” It was learnt that the eight-year-old girl was the only child of her father – who was identified as ‘Akure’ and had followed her maternal stepsister out to get what she was going to eat when the unfortunate accident happened. The eight year old girl’s father was seen crying uncontrollably while he received sympathisers. He said, “if I am at home she wouldn’t have gone out. She knew everything about me. Whenever I and her mother got into a misunderstanding, she knew how to calm me down. She knew what I wanted and what I detest. Where is my Eniola!” A family friend, Pastor Mrs. Ezekiel Ojomo, explained that the little girl had followed her sister out to get food without the consent of their mother. She said the mother would not have allowed her to follow her sister.

U.S. President Donald Trump has urged universities to keep reopening their campuses in spite of reports of COVID-19 cluster outbreaks among students across the countr “The virus is very dangerous for older people, “but for university students the likelihood of severe illness is less than or equal to the risk of a seasonal flu,” Trump was quoted by CNBC as saying. However, some universities are rethinking their plans to reopen for the fall semester after several outbreaks emerged shortly after students returned to campus. The universities, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Notre Dame, and Michigan State University, have decided in succession to halt the majority of in-person classes for the fall. “Instead of saving lives, the decision to close universities could cost lives. “It is significantly safer for students to live with other young people than to go home and spread the virus to older Americans,” Trump said. Leading experts said that factors including high COVID-19 infections among adults, increasing gatherings among teenagers and returning to school during the pandemic, might be contributing to the high infection rate. (Xinhua/NAN)