Briefly

SOMALIA

Uganda says over 50 peacekeepers killed

Some 54 Ugandan peacekeepers died when militants besieged an African Union base in Somalia last week, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni said, in one of the worst recent attacks by al-Shabaab militants in the country. The veteran leader was speaking during a meeting with members of his governing National Resistance Movement party, the presidency told AFP on Sunday. The toll is one of the heaviest yet since pro-government forces backed by the AU force, known as African Transition Mission in Somalia, launched an offensive against al-Shabaab last August. It was also a rare admission of a major military death toll by AU members.

SENEGAL

Govt cuts internet access amid unrest

Senegal's government has cut access to mobile internet services in certain areas because of unrest in which "hateful and subversive" messages have been posted online, it said in a statement on Sunday. The West African country has been rocked by three days of protests in which 16 people have died. Last week, the government limited access to certain messaging platforms, but many people were able to bypass the outage with the use of virtual private networks that mask the location of the user. It extended the outage on Sunday to include all data on mobile internet devices in certain areas and at certain times, the statement said.

MEXICO

Ruling party candidate wins key state election

A quick-count sampling of votes for governor of Mexico's most populous state suggested a victory late on Sunday for the candidate from the governing party of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which would end nearly a century of uninterrupted rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party. Preliminary results indicated Delfina Gomez of the Morena party was likely to win between 52.1 percent and 54.2 percent of the ballots in the State of Mexico, compared with 43 percent to 45.2 percent for Alejandra del Moral, representing the opposition coalition, according to the National Electoral Institute. The outcome will not be final until all ballots are counted.

Agencies Via Xinhua