The impact of the explosion damaged a trailer loaded with cement around Unguwar Mai Chida village, causing major traffic disruption.
Local sources said the device, suspected to have been planted by terrorists, exploded as the vehicle was passing through the area.
The truck, which was travelling from Sokoto to Kaduna, sustained severe damage to its head.
However, no life was lost, as the driver was rescued alive.
A resident, identified as Samaila, said the explosion occurred just hours after a joint team of police and military operatives cleared and reopened the Kucheri-Danjibga-Keta road in the Tsafe Local Government Area, which had been inaccessible for over a month due to planted explosives.
According to him, security operatives had earlier encountered resistance during the clearance operation, resulting in an exchange of gunfire that lasted several hours.
He suggested that the IED that struck the truck might have been among those initially planted to target security personnel.
Another eyewitness, identified as Lawali, a commercial driver, said he and other motorists assisted in rescuing the injured driver, identified as Dauda Adamu, from the damaged vehicle.
He described the blast as extremely loud, causing panic among road users, many of whom parked at a safe distance until military and other security personnel arrived to secure and clear the highway.
“Many drivers stopped and watched from afar until the Military and other security personnel arrived to secure and clear the road,” Lawali stated.
Confirming the incident to Channels Television via telephone conversation, the spokesperson of the Zamfara State Police Command, DSP Yazid Abubakar, said the team from the Explosive Ordinance Department had been dispatched to the location.
Residents of Ondo State have staged a protest over the abduction of worshippers at a church in the Owo Local Government Area of the state.
READ ALSO: Gunmen Storm Ondo Church, Abduct Five Worshippers
The protesters barricaded the busy Akure/Owo Expressway, leaving motorists on the road stranded.
The police confirmed the abduction of five worshippers at the church in Uso by gunmen.
It was gathered that the armed men stormed the church, a branch of the Celestial Church of Christ, at about 1 a.m. on Wednesday while a service was ongoing, abducted the worshippers, and took them to an unknown destination.
The spokesperson for the Ondo State Police Command, DSP Abayomi Jimoh, said, “Upon receiving the report, operatives of the command, in collaboration with the Nigerian Army and local vigilante groups, immediately mobilised to the scene and commenced coordinated rescue operations.”
He further disclosed that one of the victims had been rescued, while one suspect has been apprehended.
“As a result of sustained joint efforts, one of the kidnapped victims has been successfully rescued. Additionally, one suspect linked to the incident has been arrested and has made useful statements that are assisting with ongoing investigations.”
Jimoh added that operations are ongoing to ensure the safe rescue of the remaining victims and the arrest of all perpetrators involved.
The church attack comes almost four years after the terror attack on St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo, which left 41 people dead and 140 others injured.
Operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) reportedly arrested the sixth person allegedly involved in the 2022 attack on Sunday.
The agency said it was prosecuting five people for allegedly carrying out acts of terrorism.
Insecurity
Security challenges in the state and the South-West, especially the activities of armed bandits in recent months, have raised concerns among residents.
Gunmen
On January 26, residents of Ilu-Abo community in Akure North Local Government Area staged a peaceful protest over a recent surge in kidnappings, barricading the Airport–Owo Expressway and causing heavy traffic along the axis.
The protest followed the abduction of a middle-aged woman, Oladeinde Tomilola, who was kidnapped at the entrance of her residence.
Eyewitnesses said the assailants, believed to be armed, shot at her vehicle, damaging its fuel tank and tyres before whisking her away.
During the attack, two neighbours who raised the alarm and attempted to intervene were shot, one in the head and another in the stomach.
Both victims were rushed to a nearby hospital for emergency medical treatment.
London, United Kingdom – Legal experts have documented almost 1,000 incidents in which pro-Palestine voices have been allegedly targeted in the United Kingdom, data that they say represents a “systematic effort” to repress the country’s solidarity movement.
The European Legal Support Center (ELSC) said on Wednesday that it has verified 964 cases of “anti-Palestinian repression” from January 2019 until August 2025, including students being investigated over their solidarity, activists being arrested, employees facing disciplinary procedures and artists having their events cancelled.
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The findings of the study, carried out in collaboration with researchers at Forensic Architecture, are a “sample indicative of a far wider and deeper pattern”, said the group comprising lawyers and legal officers.
The ELSC pitched the report as an Index of Repression, a database that is open to the public.
“We’re launching this database to show that repression of the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain is pervasive,” Amira Abdelhamid, ELSC’s director of research and monitoring, told Al Jazeera.
One documented case involves a University of Warwick student who was reported to police by their university for carrying a sign that drew parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany during a campus rally in November 2023.
The student was arrested for “racial aggravation against the Jewish community” and investigated by their university. But in January 2024, after the ELSC stepped in, the police dropped the student’s caution and deleted all associated records. The university confirmed in March that there would be no further disciplinary action.
ELSC said “Zionist advocacy” groups, journalists and media outlets were involved in 138 incidents – including UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), a pro-Israel organisation that it said played a part in 29 of the documented cases.
“The goal of this analysis is to denaturalise this politically produced process,” the group said. “This strategic targeting across sectors represents a kind of division of repressive labour. It aims to dismantle solidarity at every stage, from the formation of political consciousness in universities and schools, to its expression in culture, to its organisation in public spaces.”
Another incident involved a football club’s kit manager who was dismissed after posting his views about Israel’s conduct on social media.
The case of Dana Abuqamar, a University of Manchester student, is also analysed in the database. The Home Office revoked her visa after she told Sky News that, after 16 years of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, “We are both in fear (of) how Israel will retaliate … but also we are full of pride.”
She later clarified that her comments were not in support of the October 7 attacks into southern Israel, during which more than 1,000 people were killed. The UKLFI reported her to the police and her university, but in 2024, she won a human rights appeal.
“The main immediate goal of this anti-Palestinian repression is to depoliticise the movement, to make it seem as though it’s not a legitimate political and ethical struggle, but rather a security problem, a problem of so-called anti-Semitism or a breach of compliance,” ELSC’s Abdelhamid said.“I don’t think that has succeeded … two years on we still see people resisting the repression happening in Britain [and] speaking up and acting for Palestine and against the genocide.”
Since Israel’s onslaught on Gaza began in October 2023, tens of thousands of Britons have rallied in support of Palestine.
According to YouGov, one in three Britons have “no sympathy at all for the Israeli side in the conflict” after Israel killed more than 70,000 people in two years and decimated the Gaza Strip.
The government, led by Labour leader Keir Starmer, has long been accused of cracking down on pro-Palestine solidarity because of a wave of arrests during demonstrations and due to its proscription of Palestine Action as a “terror” organisation – a ruling recently deemed unlawful by the High Court.
In January, Human Rights Watch said that its research found a “disproportionate targeting of certain groups, including climate change activists and Palestine protesters, undermining the right to protest freely and without fear of harassment”.
Days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed forging a network of allied nations, including in the Middle East and Africa, to stand against what he called “radical” adversaries, the country’s president is on an official visit to key ally, Ethiopia.
It is not yet known which Arab and African countries will form part of Netanyahu’s hypothetical “hexagon of alliances”, which he said on Sunday will include Israel, India, Greece, Cyprus and others to stand against their enemies in the Middle East. Chief among those enemies is presumably Iran and its network of resistance groups from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis of Yemen.
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Analysts doubt Israel could secure enough influence over nation-states to form a formal security pact.
However, the country is deepening its ongoing charm offensive in Africa, which it began during the genocide in Gaza, as its reputation suffered a decline on the continent, with the African Union (AU) releasing multiple statements condemning Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians.
In a rare visit, Israeli President Isaac Herzog arrived in Ethiopia on Tuesday. The last presidential trip to the East African country took place in 2018.
“The relationship between our peoples is woven deep into the pages of history and human tradition,” Herzog said in a statement upon his arrival. “At the heart of the story of both our nations lies a clear common thread – the ability to join hands, unite resources of spirit and substance, to innovate, develop, and grow for the benefit of all.”
Herzog, on Wednesday, met with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who said the two leaders talked about “ways to improve collaboration in areas of mutual interest,” without revealing further details.
But beneath the surface, observers say the visit also represents a battle for influence over Addis Ababa, which has received similar high-level delegations from Turkiye and Saudi Arabia in recent days.
Shared ties and shared anger
Ethiopia and Israel are bound by several links, from shared histories of their people to shared scrutiny over recent political moves in the Horn of Africa that have angered several of the region’s influential nations.
Both countries maintain friendly ties largely due to the Beta Israel community, or Ethiopian Jews, who hail from northern Tigray and Amhara. Historically, Ethiopian Jews suffered religious persecution, and after Israel’s formation, it sought their emigration under its Law of Return policy. Between the late 1970s and mid-1990s, tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews were covertly transported to Israel – during a time when several African countries, including Ethiopia, had cut off ties with Israel over the 1973 Yom Kippur War and its invasion of Egypt.On the cusp of a civil war in Ethiopia in 1991, Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, launched a daring operation that airlifted 14,000 Ethiopians over the course of just two days.
About 160,000 Ethiopian Jews now live in Israel. Many within the community have struggled to integrate and have complained of discrimination and racism. In 2019, tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews flooded the streets in protest across Israeli cities after a 19-year-old of Ethiopian origin was shot dead by the police.
Ethiopia-Israel state relations have, meanwhile, remained steady. In 2016, when Netanyahu visited the country in his first prime ministerial visit – Addis Ababa became one of the first African countries to voice support for Israel’s long-sought observer status at the AU. Fierce opposition from South Africa, Algeria and other countries supporting Palestine delayed the process until 2021. Later, in 2023, the AU confirmed it had withdrawn the status.
Mashav, Israel’s aid agency, has, in the past decade, provided aid to Ethiopia in the form of agriculture and water cooperation projects, although Addis Ababa receives much more significant funding from wealthier partners like China. When Israel sponsored several African journalists on media trips to the country last year, Ethiopia was among the countries it invited journalists from.
More recently, both countries are bound by their support for Somaliland, which Somalia claims as part of its territory and which Israel sees as critical to its own national security, Hargeisa-based analyst Moustafa Ahmad told Al Jazeera.
In December, Israel recognised Somaliland’s statehood, becoming the first country to do so. Months before, there were unconfirmed talks about plans to move displaced Palestinians to Somaliland or to South Sudan, another key Israeli ally in the region. Analysts speculate that countries like South Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, another close friend of Israel, may also recognise Somaliland.
Israel’s focus on the Horn of Africa intensified after a late 2024 report from a United Nations expert panel, which found that the Somalia-based armed group, al-Shabab, was actively collaborating with Yemen’s Houthis. Where the Houthis were providing weapons and drone training, al-Shabab was, in return, granting access to a smuggling corridor stretching along the Somali coast and connecting to the Gulf of Aden, where Iranian weapons could be smuggled into Yemen.
The move to recognise Somaliland was therefore meant to disrupt that cooperation by stationing an Israeli naval base in the region, analysts note.
“It’s part of their calculations even if they haven’t said it publicly,” Ahmad said.
Several countries, as well as the AU, have pushed back on Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, calling it a violation of Somalia’s sovereignty. In Somaliland, however, many have celebrated the move.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds hands with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, left, following a media conference in Ankara, on December 11, 2024 [File: Murat Kula/Presidential Press Office/Handout via Reuters]
Addis Ababa under pressure
While neither Israel nor Ethiopia has provided details of topics on the agenda during Herzog’s visit, Somaliland is likely at the top of the list.
Addis Ababa had in 2024 enraged its neighbours after it signed a controversial port deal with Hargeisa that would allow it access to the sea, reportedly in exchange for a future recognition of Somaliland. Although massive and rapidly industrialising, Ethiopia is landlocked, having lost its sea access after Eritrea seceded in 1993. Prime Minister Abiy has often said sea access is critical for his country.
The fall-out between Ethiopia and Somalia was so severe that analysts sounded the alarm over possible armed conflict between the two neighbours until Turkiye, a key development partner for Mogadishu, stepped in to smooth things over by pressuring Addis Ababa to coordinate with Mogadishu instead.
It is likely, analysts say, that Israel is now hoping to push Ethiopia further towards recognising Somaliland, which boasts a 850km (528-mile) coastline. In Hargeisa, many are disappointed after more countries failed to follow Israel’s steps, Ahmad said.
Addis Ababa, though, might not appreciate further pressure at the moment as it faces increasing regional isolation on several fronts.
One key reason is the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which Egypt and Sudan say is blocking the water supply they need for irrigation.
A source of national pride for Ethiopians, the dam was funded almost entirely through citizens’ donations and government funds. Israeli engineers participated in the project, and Israel reportedly sold weapons to Ethiopia to protect the dam amid tensions with its neighbours, although the Israeli government denies this.
At the same time, Addis Ababa is also facing tensions with Eritrea, which has moved closer to Somalia and Egypt. Both countries have historically feuded, and recently, tensions have again risen over the 2020 Tigray War and Abiy’s repeated statements about his country needing access to the sea.
“Addis Ababa is cautious of making a decision that will cement its regional isolation at this time [because] it is clearly hedging among various actors seeking to influence the Horn of Africa and Red Sea region,” Ahmad said.
Pressure is also mounting on Addis Ababa from countries eager to keep the status quo.
On Sunday, Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Ethiopia and said in his speech: “I would like to emphasise that Israel’s recognition of Somaliland does not benefit Somaliland or the Horn of Africa.”
His statement drew a backlash from Hargeisa, which called it “unacceptable interference” aimed at wrecking relations between Somaliland and its partners.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, which is embroiled in an ongoing rift with the United Arab Emirates over how to deal with the conflict in Yemen, also intervened in the fray in February. Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Waleed Elkhereiji was in Addis Ababa this week to discuss “regional peace”, just two weeks after Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud arrived in the city for talks with Abiy.
So far, it is unclear if Riyadh has recorded any success in influencing Addis Ababa.
Scottish Premiership leaders Hearts will be without key defender Stuart Findlay for six weeks while record signing Eduardo Ageu will miss the rest of the season.
Head coach Derek McInnes also confirmed goalkeeper Craig Gordon’s shoulder injury could keep him out of Scotland’s March friendlies against Japan and Ivory Coast.
Findlay, 30, has been a pivotal figure for the league leaders having started all 28 Premiership matches in the middle of defence, but was forced off in the win over Falkirk with a hamstring injury.
Brazilian midfielder Ageu made the first start of an injury-hit debut season against Rangers at Ibrox, but was taken off and will now be sidelined until next season because he needs thigh surgery.
Gordon has also played limited minutes for Hearts this term, but is one of Scotland’s key players as they prepare for a first World Cup finals since 1998.
Beni Baningime, Oisin McEntee and Sabah Kerjota also have knocks but still have a chance of playing against Aberdeen on Saturday.
McInnes says he hopes Findlay and captain Lawrence Shankland, who has been missing since 17 January with a hamstring injury, will be back for the final pre-split game against Motherwell on 11 April.
Another key figure, midfielder Cammy Devlin, is due back in “two or three weeks” according to McInnes, as is defender Stephen Kingsley.
Hearts are four points clear of Rangers at the top of the Premiership.
“As it stands we had 11 players unavailable to train today, but we’ve still got enough to train and put a strong team out and a strong squad out on Saturday,” McInnes said.
“So my focus is the ones that are available, and just trying to get one or two who are in the 50-50 category available for the weekend.
“It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself, easy to think: ‘why us? why me?’ But it’s unrealistic to go through a full campaign [without injuries].
“It’s a league for as reason, you have to go through these different tests and challenges.
“There’s no doubt we’re getting challenged at the minute. Once we get through the next four games we will ideally be a bit stronger going into the final run in.
“It will almost feel like a transfer window opening up in April. So you’ve got to take the good with the bad.”
The Lionesses will become the first England team to play at Everton’s new stadium when they host Ukraine in a Women’s World Cup qualifier on Tuesday, 9 June.
Hill Dickinson Stadium, which opened last summer, is one of the host venues for Euro 2028 and is on the shortlist of the UK bid for the 2035 Women’s World Cup.
Scotland are also facing the Ivory Coast at the stadium on 31 March to prepare for this summer’s men’s World Cup.
Sarina Wiegman’s two-time European champions are bidding for a place at the 2027 Women’s World Cup and are in a qualifying group with Spain, Ukraine and Iceland.
They take on Ukraine in Turkey on Tuesday, 3 March (17:00), before welcoming Iceland to the City Ground on Saturday, 7 March (12:30).
Their first meeting with defending champions Spain – who they beat in the Euro 2025 final – is on 14 April at Wembley Stadium.
“It is very exciting for us to be playing for the first time at Everton’s new stadium,” said Wiegman.
“We have always said that taking this team around the country is so important and we’re really looking forward to playing in front of fans in the north-west.
