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African press review 3 March 2018

Burkina Faso suffers another deadly attack and it looks like someone wants France out of Sahel.

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We begin in Burkina Faso where the papers carry graphic images of some of the six heavily armed gunmen killed during Friday's daring attack on strategic sites in the capital Ouagadougou.

"Terrorists in Ouga, French embassy and Army Headquarters attacked”, headlines l'Observateur Paalga. The paper reports that one of the terrorists trying to flee the site through a nearby market was quickly overpowered by the population and handed over to security forces.

Sidwaya publishes interviews of Burkina Faso's Defense Minister Jean-Claude Bouda in which he identifies the 8 assailants killed as Jihadists.

The paper carries an appeal from the government announcing the end of security operations and urging Burkinabés to go about their businesses without fear and to avoid areas of Ouagadougou cordoned off by security forces.

Wrong man in brain surgery

In Kenya, the Standard says that shocking details have continued to emerge about what transpired on the night a man was mistakenly put under the surgeon’s scalpel through brain surgery at the country's top hospital last Monday.

According to the paper, the patient remains unconscious at the Nairobi's Kenyatta National Hospital with the tag of ‘unknown African man wrapped around his arm.’ This, was while the other patient who had been bidding for the lifesaving operation, remains unconscious in a nearby bed, with no clues about his identity.

The Standard reports that it took four hours for the medics at the facility to realise this mistake which has exposed just how broken the KNH system is. The newspaper claims that currently, the state of the patient who ought to have been in surgery that Monday night continues to deteriorate adding that his prognosis is bad with medics saying they aren’t sure if he will survive.

Meanwhile, in Nigeria, the Tribune leads with some reassuring news for parents of the 110 Dapchi girls abducted from their school in Yobe State on February 19. It's an interview of a human rights activist, Aisha Wakil, a negotiator who brokered deals with Boko Haram on the Chibok girls, during the President Goodluck Jonathan era.

The woman fondly known as “Mama Boko Haram” claims she had received a phone call from the Barnawi faction of the Islamist insurgents holding the girls reassuring her that they are safe, healthy and in good condition.

Nigeria's golden prisoners

And also in Nigeria, Saturday Punch has a revolting account of the luxury lives some rich criminals live in the Lagos-based Kiri-kiri prison the country's largest penitentiary.

The paper speaks to a former inmate turned prison reform advocate, who says that behind the dingy, damp, overcrowded and dimly lit prison cells are special sections where affluent inmates spend up to N300,000 (700 euros) per month to live like lords.

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