A passenger plane crashed into a residential neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria, killing all 153 people aboard plus several on the ground, in one of Nigeria's deadliest aviation disasters.
Sources: The Guardian ; BBC News
Disaster
Ceiling of Debre Birhan Selassie church, Gondar, Ethiopia. Photo: Rod Waddington, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence · Source
On this day: June 3 in African history
Real events, births and milestones from Africa and the diaspora.
Soldiers and Rapid Support Forces militiamen cleared the sit-in outside army headquarters in Khartoum with live fire. More than a hundred people were killed, by most counts, and at least forty bodies were pulled from the Nile. Doctors recorded more than seventy rapes. A committee appointed by the ruling military council put the dead at 87 and said no rapes had taken place.
Sources: Physicians for Human Rights ; Al Jazeera
Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed
PoliticsCharles Lwanga and companions, a group of Christian converts executed on the orders of the Buganda king for refusing to renounce their faith, are commemorated each year on this date as the Uganda Martyrs.
Sources: Vatican News ; Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales
Culture
Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons 1818 Louis Faidherbe, the French general and colonial governor whose administration reshaped Senegal and expanded French control in West Africa, was born.
Sources: Assemblée nationale (France), Base de données des députés français depuis 1789 ; Chemins de mémoire, Ministère des Armées (France)
History