Briefly

NIGERIA

Leader vows to find independence bombers

ABUJA | Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Wednesday vowed that everything possible would be done to unearth those behind last week’s independence day bombings that killed 12 people.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, a militant group operating in the oil-rich Niger Delta, claimed responsibility for the attacks, which took place a few hundred yards from an independence parade in the capital, Abuja.

But Mr. Jonathan has blamed the attacks on “a small terrorist group that resides outside Nigeria that was paid by some people.”

ETHIOPIA

Officials release top opposition leader

ADDIS ABABA | Ethiopian officials on Wednesday released a top opposition leader who had been sentenced to life in prison after the government said she had violated a pardon agreement and sent her back to jail in late 2008.

The Ethiopian government said Wednesday in a statement that they released Birtukan Mideksa because she requested a pardon last month, after spending nearly two years in prison.

The single mother and former judge was one of 100 opposition politicians and activists jailed after the 2005 election and charged with treason, but she was later pardoned after signing an agreement in 2007.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

Military: Army retakes rebel-held town

BANGUI | Central African Republic government troops regained control of a town held by rebels since Sept. 18, military and government sources said on Wednesday.

But a spokesman for the rebel group, the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP), claimed its fighters still held the town in the unstable east of the country.

The army “regained control of the town of Yalinga in the early hours of Monday morning without resistance after rebel elements fled,” a source close to the military general staff told Agence France-Presse.

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