The UN Security Council voted Monday for stricter sanctions on Eritrea, including extending travel bans and a freeze on assets, over its support for al Shabaab Islamist militants in Somalia and its "efforts to destabilise" regional states.
Israel has witnessed a sharp rise in the number of illegal immigrants arriving from Africa. Some of the new arrivals are pushing to be granted refugee status, fleeing persecution and war back home. But the Israeli government has been caught off guard by the sudden influx - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called it a "threat to the Jewish character" of the country.
The UN Security Council has imposed tough sanctions on Eritrea, targeting government and military leaders with an arms embargo, travel restrictions, and asset freezes in a bid to stop Asmara's support for Somali rebels.
The Irob people, who inhabit arid highlands at the frontline border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, fled the war between the two countries at the end of the 1990s. Only in the past three years have they started resettling on their land.
Since the withdrawal in July of the United Nation’s Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, the two countries' armies find themselves in a dangerous face-off.
