Southern,middle belt leaders call for restructuring

Five presidents have conveyed for a crisis summit in Maputo to discuss how to combat rebels in Mozambique. The meeting comes just after 12 people were beheaded following an attack claimed by the "Islamic State."

Governors of Lagos, Ogun, Rivers, Enugu, Anambra, Osun, and Oyo States arrive in Asaba, Delta State capital, for a meeting of the Southern Governors' Forum. Details of the meeting is still sketchy, it may not be unconnected with the spate of attacks across the country.

Here are a few reasons to pick up a copy of The Guardian on Wednesday. Find these stories and much more when you grab a copy of The Guardian on Wednesday. ⁣⁣

Southern, Middle belt leaders urge FG to declare state of emergency on insecurity

The second phase of the Southern governors Forum about to start here in Lagos. The forum will be addressing the follow up to the last meeting they had in Asaba where they resolved on ban on open grazing and the need to to restructure Nigeria.

Here are a few reasons to pick up a copy of The Guardian on Tuesday. Find these stories and much more when you grab a copy of The Guardian on Tuesday.⁣⁣

The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria has thrown their weight behind the rotation of presidency as agreed by the southern governors forum.

Aerial images show the aftermath of a fire which enveloped a Covid isolation unit and killed 64 in southern Iraq. The deadly blaze at Al-Hussein Hospital in the provincial capital Nasiriyah, which medics said was fuelled by the explosion of oxygen canisters, was the second such fire in Iraq in three months.

"I was out there. I saw the flames creeping up the side of the bluff," recalls Frank Lee Smith, a resident of Klamath County in southern Oregon, who had to evacuate due to the Bootleg Fire, which continues to grow. "It's slowly sinking in that I got no place to go to and now I gotta figure things out." Whipped up by dry conditions and strengthening winds, the Bootleg Fire has already devoured more than 212,758 acres (86,000 hectares) - the equivalent of 120,000 soccer fields.

Authorities said the van was carrying as many as 30 people, mainly migrant workers, at the time when it crashed on a highway in southern Texas after the driver lost control of the vehicle.

Buildings in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand, are still damaged and charred from the recent fierce fighting which brought the Taliban back into power and ousted the former government.

A huge fire has ravaged the forests in the Sierra Bermeja mountains in the southern Spanish province of Malaga, forcing mass evacuations, including to a sports centre set up to house evacuees from neighbouring towns.