Unita said it had invited the politicians, including Tanzanian opposition leader Tundu Lissu, Mozambique’s Venancio Mondlane and Botswana’s former President Ian Khama, to a summit on democracy.

“The action of the Angolan government to prevent us from entering Angola is inexplicable and unacceptable,” Lissu said on X.

The BBC has asked the Angolan government to comment.

But according to a source from the Migration and Aliens Service (SME), “the expulsion was due to irregularities in the visa procedure, which prevented Mondlane and 13 other members of his entourage from entering Angolan territory”.

At least 20 leaders and representatives from various political parties across Africa were denied entry, said Lissu.

“The government of this country is ruling a dictatorship while pretending that Angola is a democratic country,” he said.

Kenyan senator Edwin Sifuna, from the opposition Orange Democratic Movement, said on X he was among those denied entry into Angola.

Others included Colombia’s former President Andres Pastrana and Zanzibar’s first Vice-President Othman Masoud Othman.

Tomas Viera Mario, a Mozambican political analyst, told the BBC the move was “strange” as Angola’s President Joao Lourenco has positioned himself as a kind of mediator on the continent.

Lourenco is currently the chair of the African Union (AU), and is hosting peace talks over the DR Congo conflict next week.

Mr Mario added that barring these figures showed “total contempt and “little respect” for the pan-African spirit of the AU.

All the deported leaders were part of a delegation invited by Unita to participate in a political event in Benguela province.

Unita lawmaker Nelito da Costa Ekwiki also condemned the decision not to allow them entry to the country.

The Angolan government has long been accused of shutting down dissent in order to maintain its hold on power.

The cyclone struck on Friday, making landfall in the north of the Indian Ocean island east of Madagascar, blowing away roofs and cutting power and access to drinking water for many residents.

It exited the southwest of the island several hours later, French weather office Meteo-France said, adding that the worst of the storm had passed.

A red alert, ordering the population to stay indoors, was lifted on Saturday morning after Garance was downgraded to a severe tropical storm.

The body of a man was found trapped under a tree in the capital, Saint-Denis, authorities said on Saturday.

The other victims, two women and a man, were carried away by flash floods, trapped in a mudslide or killed by an electrical fire, authorities said on Friday.

Around 160,000 people were still without electricity, while more than 950 were staying in temporary accommodation centres on Saturday.

More  than 310,000 residents had no access to drinking water and nearly 140,000 were without internet access.

Patrice Latron, the central government representative on the island, said “a lot of work” would be needed, with many roads blocked by fallen trees.

“Roads are flooded, roads are cut off and some washed away,” he added.

During the passage of the cyclone on Friday, Meteo-France recorded winds of up to 230km (143 miles) per hour in Piton Sainte-Rose on the island’s eastern coast.

“The cyclone is still a threat for the island, I call on all to follow local authorities’ instructions,” French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said on X on Friday. “Our thoughts are with them and their loved ones who have been hit hard.”

The nearby tourist island of Mauritius shut its main airport on Wednesday, while La Reunion shut down flights on Thursday. Its international airport was to reopen late on Saturday.

Residents said the force of the cyclone was frightening.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a cyclone this powerful, and also the first time I’ve been afraid,” Vincent Clain, 45, who lives in Sainte-Marie on the northern coast, told the AFP news agency.

He said the storm uprooted trees in his garden. “I thought they would crash onto the house,” he said.

Clain, his wife, their son and dog hid in their kitchen, “the safest area of the house”.

Aline Etheve, a resident of Sainte-Suzanne on the coast, said she was worried the roof of her house would collapse after the storm destroyed her garden fence.

“I must admit I’m a little scared,” she told AFP, adding that her power and Wi-Fi access were gone.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday night that Uganda’s Ministry of Health reported a positive Ebola case at Mulago Hospital, the country’s only referral centre for the virus, and it was discovered in a four-year-old who died on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Uganda confirmed it had recorded 10 cases of a new strain of the virus. The first fatality from the latest outbreak was a male nurse who died before the outbreak was declared on January 30.

In February, the Health Ministry said all eight Ebola patients under care had been discharged, but at least 265 contacts remained under strict quarantine in Kampala.

The  latest outbreak is the sixth time Uganda has detected cases of Ebola. The cause of this new outbreak has been referred to as the Sudan Ebola strain, which does not have an approved vaccine yet.

The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people – the virus’s largest death toll.

The The virus is transmitted through contact with infected bodily fluids and tissues. Its symptoms include fever, vomiting and muscle pain.

Ebola surveillance work in Africa has come under threat as NGOs that used to be funded through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have been forced to stop as President Donald Trump is essentially dismantling the US government’s aid agency.

Charles Olaro, the director of health services at Uganda’s Ministry of Health, told The Associated Press that the aid cuts affect some NGOs that help nations respond to infectious diseases.

“There  are challenges, but we need to adjust to the new reality,” Olaro said.

Until recently, King Thutmose II’s tomb was the last undiscovered royal tomb of the 18th Egyptian dynasty.

But a British-Egyptian team located it in the Western Valleys of the Theban Necropolis near the city of Luxor. Researchers had thought the burial chambers of the 18th dynasty pharaohs were on the other end of the mountain, near the Valley of the Kings.

The crew found it an area known for the resting places of royal women, but when they got into the burial chamber they found it decorated – the sign of a pharaoh.

“And part of the ceiling was still intact – a blue-painted ceiling with yellow stars on it. And blue-painted ceilings with yellow stars are only found in king’s tombs,” said the field director of the mission Dr Piers Litherland.

He told the BBC’s Newshour programme he felt overwhelmed in the moment.

“When I came out, my wife was waiting outside and the only thing I could do was burst into tears,” he said.

“When you come across something that you’re not expecting to find, it’s emotionally extremely turbulent really.”

He said the discovery solved the mystery of where the tombs of early 18th dynasty kings are located.

Researchers found Thutmose II’s mummified remains two centuries ago but its original burial site had never been located.

Thutmose II was an ancestor of Tutankhamun, whose reign is believed to have been from about 1493 to 1479 BCE. Tutankhamun’s tomb was found by British archaeologists in 1922.

He is best known for being the husband of Queen Hatshepsut, regarded as one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs and one of the few female pharaohs who ruled in her own right.

Dr Litherland said the “large staircase and a very large descending corridor” of the tomb suggested grandeur.

They had to crawl through a 10m passageway, through a roughly 40sq cm opening, before making it into the chamber.

There they discovered the blue ceiling and the chamber decorated with scenes from the Amduat, a religious text which was reserved for kings. That was the key sign they had found a king’s tomb, Dr Litherland said.

Artefacts, including fragments of alabaster jars which bore the inscriptions of the names of Thutmose II and Hatshepsut, provided definitive evidence. These are the first objects to be found associated with Thutmose II’s burial.

Dr Litherland’s team has theorised that this tomb was flooded about six years after the burial and so the contents could have been moved to another location during ancient times. He said his team had a rough idea of where that second tomb was and that it could still be intact with treasures.

The discovery of the pharaoh’s tomb caps off more than 12 years of work by the joint team from Dr Litherland’s New Kingdom Research Foundation and Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The team has previously excavated 54 tombs in the western part of the Theban mountain in Luxor, and had also established identities of more than 30 royal wives and court women.

“This is the first royal tomb to be discovered since the ground-breaking find of King Tutankhamun’s burial chamber in 1922,” said Egypt’s minister of tourism and antiquities Sherif Fathy.

“It is an extraordinary moment for Egyptology and the broader understanding of our shared human story.”

Some people lined the streets to clap and cheer the fighters as they marched and drove into the city centre without resistance. It is the second city after Goma to fall to the rebels in the mineral-rich region in the past few weeks.

The Congolese government has acknowledged its fall and urged residents to stay at home “to avoid being targeted by the occupying forces”.

The UN and European countries have warned that the latest offensive, which has seen hundreds of thousands of people forced from their homes, could spark a wider regional war.

A resident in Bukavu, who asked to remain anonymous because of concerns for her safety, told the BBC on Sunday that most people were still afraid to leave their homes.

“Since yesterday the children and the youth took the weapons. They are shooting everywhere in all directions, they are looting,” she said.

“This morning the M23 entered and they were acclaimed by the people, very happy to see them. We don’t know if it’s because they are afraid or because they found that there were no authorities in the city.

“The place where I live the crackling [gunfire] can still be heard.”

On Friday, the M23 captured Bukavu’s main airport, which is about 30km (18 miles) north of the city – and then began advancing slowly towards the city, which is the capital of South-Kivu province.

The provincial governor, Jean-Jacques Purusi Sadiki, confirmed to the Reuters news agency the fighters were in Bukavu city centre by Sunday morning, adding that Congolese troops had withdrawn to avoid urban fighting.

This left a security vacuum in the city on Saturday with chaotic scenes playing out, including a reported prison break from the central prison.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said a warehouse with nearly 7,000 tonnes of food was looted.

The city of around two million people on the southern tip of Lake Kivu borders Rwanda and is an important transit point for the local mineral trade.

Its fall represents an unprecedented expansion of territory for the M23 since their latest insurgency started in late 2021 – and is a blow to the government of President Félix Tshisekedi.

Government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said Rwanda was violating DR Congo’s territorial integrity through expansionist ambitions and human rights abuses.

The Congolese government accuses Rwanda of sowing chaos in the region – as well as having troops on the ground – so it can benefit from its natural resources, something Kigali denies.

President Tshisekedi wants his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame to face sanctions over the latest unrest.

But President Kagame has dismissed such threats – and has repeatedly pointed out that Rwanda’s main priority is its security.

He has long been angered by what he sees as the failure of the Congolese authorities to deal with the DR Congo-based FLDR rebel group, which he sees as a danger to Rwanda.

The group is made up of some members of the ethnic Hutu militia accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda when over 100 days around 800,000 people, mainly from the Tutsi ethnic group, were killed.

Troops from the Tusti-led M23 gathered at the Place de l’Indépendance in central Bukavu on Sunday, where one of its commanders, Bernard Byamungu, was filmed chatting to locals and answering their questions in Swahili.

He urged government forces “hiding in houses” to surrender – and accused the withdrawing military of spreading terror by arming local youths who had gone on a looting rampage.

The African Union (AU) – which has been holding a heads of state summit in Ethiopia this weekend – again urged the M23 to disarm.

“We are all very, very concerned about an open regional war,” Reuters quotes the AU’s peace and security commissioner Bankole Adeo as saying.

Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance which includes M23 rebels, told Reuters news agency the rebels had entered the South Kivu provincial capital on Friday evening and would continue their advance on Saturday.

The Rwandan-backed militants’ progress comes despite international calls for a ceasefire and a resumption of peace talks.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes in recent weeks as a result of the rebel advance.

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Last month, the Tutsi-led M23, which is backed by neighbouring Rwanda, seized Goma, the main city in the mineral-rich east. The Congolese government accuses Rwanda of sowing chaos in the region in order to benefit from its resources, a claim Rwanda has denied.

The M23 briefly captured Goma in a previous conflict in 2012, but the taking of Bukavu, which is the capital of South Kivu province, would represent a new phase in the turbulent recent history of the region.

The city, which borders Rwanda, is on the southern tip of Lake Kivu and is an important transit point for the local mineral trade.

Earlier on Friday, rebel fighters had entered the airport some 30km (19 miles) north of Bukavu, as the Congolese army and a militia allied with it withdrew without putting up much resistance.

But there were heavy clashes on the outskirts of Bukavu, South Kivu’s Deputy governor Jean Elekano, had told the BBC.

In a village further north – Mayba – 70 bodies were found in a church, according to local media reports.

A local community coordinator in North Kivu, Vianney Vitswamba, told the DR Congo news agency 7Sur7 that the bodies were found tied up. Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels – an Islamic State-linked group – were blamed, but the BBC has not confirmed the report.

• The DR Congo rebel leader whose fighters have created turmoil
• What’s the fighting in DR Congo all about?

Residents of Bukavu contacted by the BBC said the authorities advised residents to remain indoors.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, DR Congo’s President Félix Tshisekedi called for Rwanda to be sanctioned, accusing it of having “expansionist ambitions”, the AFP news agency reports.

“We will no longer put up with our strategic resources being plundered for the benefit of foreign interests under the complicit gaze of those who feed on chaos,” he is quoted as saying.

As well as being accused of backing the rebels, which Rwanda has denied, the country is also said to have its own troops in eastern DR Congo.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has said his country’s priority is security. He has said Rwanda is in danger from Hutu rebels in DR Congo and has dismissed any threat of sanctions.

The news of the latest advance comes as the continent’s heads of state are due to meet at an African Union (AU) summit in Ethiopia on Saturday.

The head of the AU commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat is quoted by AFP as saying that a ceasefire “must be observed” adding that “military campaigns are not going to solve these problems. There is a general mobilisation of Africa today on this issue and I hope that we will be able to impose this ceasefire”.

As the conflict in Sudan nears the two-year mark, the army has in recent weeks won back large swaths of the capital and its surrounding areas from the paramilitary group.

RSF  still controls some key positions, including the central market, the presidential palace, and some of the southern and western residential districts.

It also holds parts of the central region of Kordofan, most of the western region of Darfur, and is besieging the army and its allies in the city of el-Fashir, the capital of north Darfur.

Residents and medics on Friday said the RSF attacked the famine-stricken Zamzam displacement camp, south of el-Fashir, as the group attempted to tighten its grip on the Darfur stronghold.

An estimated 11.4 million civilians have been forced from their homes since the conflict began in April 2023. Three million are refugees in neighbouring countries, while more than eight million are internally displaced. 

“Sudan’s regional neighbours say they want the conflict to end,” Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall said, reporting from Sudan’s Sennar. “Peace efforts were made in Jeddah, Cairo, Addis Ababa, Geneva and elsewhere. But all have so far failed.

“Both the RSF and the army say they’re ready to talk but with caveats and conditions unacceptable to the other side. Both still believe they can achieve total victory on the battlefield.”

Speaking  on Friday at a high-level humanitarian conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the situation in Sudan as a catastrophe on a “staggering scale and brutality”.

“It is a crisis that demands sustained and urgent attention,” he told participants, stressing the need to stop the movement of arms and ammunition into the country.

“This flow is enabling the continuation of tremendous civilian destruction and bloodshed,” Guterres added.

Nearly 25 million people are suffering from “acute” levels of hunger, according to UN figures, and delivering aid requires a ceasefire to be put in place.

Guterres called on world leaders to use their influence for peace and boost humanitarian aid efforts ahead of the holy month of Ramadan.

“We must do more – and do more now – to help the people of Sudan out of this nightmare.”

Researchers who examined nine mummies found that though there was some difference in the intensity of their odours, all could be described as “woody”, “spicy” and “sweet”.

They say recreating the composition of the smells chemically will allow others to experience a mummy’s whiff – and help to tell when the bodies inside may be starting to rot.

“We want to share the experience we had smelling the mummified bodies, so we’re reconstructing the smell to be presented in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo,” Cecilia Bembibre, one of the researchers, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

During the mummification process, ancient Egyptians would surround the body with pleasant smells as an important part of preparing a spirit to enter the afterlife.

As a result, pharaohs and members of the nobility were adorned with oils, waxes and balms during the mummification process.

“In films and books, terrible things happen to those who smell mummified bodies,” said Dr Bembibre said.

“We were surprised at the pleasantness of them.”

The authors of the academic study, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on Thursday, had to get the smell from inside the sarcophagus without interfering with the mummy inside.

The researchers, from UCL and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, did so by inserting a tiny tube so they were able measure the scent without taking any physical samples.

Dr Bembibre explained that heritage scientists are always trying to find “non-destructive” ways to discover new information.

Visitors who smell the scents in the museums will be able to experience ancient Egypt and the mummification process from a totally different perspective.

Ally Louks, an English literature supervisor at the University of Cambridge who wrote her PhD thesis on the politics of smell, described this as a “really innovative” way to communicate history.

“To engage your nose produces a strong emotional and physical reaction,” she told the BBC.

“We know smells were essential to social, religious and personal practises [in ancient Egypt],” Dr Louks said.

Matija Strlič, another member of the study team, told the Associated Press the scents may even suggest what social class a mummy was from.

“We believe that this approach is potentially of huge interest to other types of museum collections,” he said.

As well as providing museum-goers with a new sensory insight into mummies, the discovery also presents a potential breakthrough for mummy conservationists.

The researchers used a technique called gas chromatography to separate the different smells inside the sarcophagus that combined to make its scent.

They found odours relating to the break-down of animal fats used in the embalming process, which could indicate the body is beginning to decompose.

Because of these findings, it will be possible to “practically intervene” in the conservation of the mummies, identifying how best to store and wrap the bodies, the research paper said.

“This is useful for conservators who care for this collection [as] we can ensure it reaches future generations,” Dr Bembibre said.

Hailed as Namibia’s “Founding Father”, Nujoma passed away on Saturday night following a three-week hospitalisation in the capital, Windhoek, according to the Namibian presidency.

Nujoma led the long fight for independence from South Africa in 1990 after helping found Namibia’s liberation movement known as the South West Peoples’ Organisation (Swapo) in the 1960s.

After independence, Nujoma became president in 1990 and led the country until 2005.

Nujoma had been hospitalised over the past three weeks with an illness from which he “could not recover”, Namibian President Nangolo Mbumba said in a statement announcing the death with “utmost sorrow and sadness”.

He “inspired us to rise to our feet and to become masters of this vast land of our ancestors,” President Mbumba said.

He added: “Our Founding Father lived a long and consequential life during which he exceptionally served the people of his beloved country.”

Nujoma retired as head of state in 2005, but continued to lead the party before stepping down in 2007 as president of the ruling Swapo party after 47 years at the helm.

Nujoma was revered in his homeland as a charismatic father figure who steered his country to democracy and stability after long colonial rule by Germany and a bitter war of independence from South Africa.

He was the last of a generation of African leaders who led their countries out of colonial or white minority rule that included South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and Mozambique’s Samora Machel.

Nujoma headed the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) that led the liberation struggle since its inception in 1960.

While SWAPO has remained in power since independence, Nujoma finally quit in 2007 at the age of 78, two years after standing down from the presidency.

Many Namibians credited Nujoma’s leadership for the process of national healing and reconciliation after the deep divisions caused by the independence war and South Africa’s policies of dividing the country into ethnically based regional governments.

Even his political opponents praised Nujoma for establishing a democratic constitution and involving white businessmen and politicians in government after independence. He was also known for his fierce anti-Western ideology and railing against homosexuality, which he called a “foreign and corrupt ideology” and AIDS disease “a man-made biological weapon”.

Trump on Sunday accused the South African government of “confiscating land” and treating “certain classes of people” badly, without elaborating or providing evidence.

The US president had already announced a temporary freeze on almost all foreign assistance as part of his “America First” agenda, pausing billions of dollars in global funding.

South Africa adopted a bill for the state to expropriate land to address racial disparities in ownership.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump stated: “I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!”

Later, in a briefing with journalists, he accused South Africa’s leadership, without providing evidence or details, of doing “some terrible things, horrible things”.

In  response, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation said, “We trust President Trump’s advisers will make use of the investigative period to attain a thorough understanding of South Africa’s policies within the framework of a constitutional democracy.

“It may become clear that our expropriation act is not exceptional, as many countries have similar legislation,” it added.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa also denied that the government is confiscating land.

“We look forward to engaging with the Trump administration over our land reform policy and issues of bilateral interest. We are certain that out of those engagements, we will share a better and common understanding over these matters,” Ramaphosa said in a statement.

“South Africa is a constitutional democracy that is deeply rooted in the rule of law, justice and equality.”

President Ramaphosa added that, except for the US Aid programme for AIDS relief – PEPFAR, no other significant funding is provided to South Africa by the US.

Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa but is now closely allied to Trump, replied to Ramaphosa, writing, without providing evidence: “Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?”

Last month, Ramaphosa signed a bill into law that would make it easier for the state to expropriate land in the public interest to address racial disparities in land ownership after apartheid in 1994.

According to the government, the bill does not allow it to expropriate property arbitrarily; the landowner must reach an agreement.