Tanzanian student killed in Hamas attack in Israel

Many migrants and other foreigners from Africa have been caught up in foreign wars where a good number have been killed. The latest is a Tanzanian student who was killed and others feared abducted in Israel when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked the Jewish state on 7th November 2023 killing over 1200 people and abducting over 200 others, mainly Israelis. Clemence Felix Mtenga was confirmed dead but his colleague and countryman Joshua Loitu Mollel is still missing.

Not long before, his father, Mzee Felix Mtenga of  Kirwa village, Rombo district, in Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro region and family members had been in a jovial mood when they bid farewell to the son, Clemence Felix Mtenga,22, who was going for an agriculture internship. "Clemence was here for two weeks after graduating from Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) when he told us that he was lucky to have secured a scholarship for a practical internship in Israel.  What we didn't know was that that fortune would turn into a big misfortune. I can't say anything more, it's very unfortunate", he told the Press after the news broke out officially that his son Clemence Felix Mtenga was dead.

The Tanzanian government on 17 November 2023, confirmed the death of Clemence Felix Mtenga, who was killed in his residence at the Kibbutz Nir Oz dairy farm by Hamas militants in the October 7, 2023 attack.  His compatriot Joshua Loitu Mollel is feared to have been taken hostage and is still missing. Both governments of Tanzania and of Israel still look for his whereabouts.

Clemence Felix Mtenga's death touched many people around the world. The Jewish Report Newsletter-, published on 23 November 2023 reads, "All that Clemence Felix Mtenga (22) and Joshua Loitu Mollel (21) wanted was to learn the art of agriculture in Israel, return to their home country of Tanzania, and provide for their families. But those dreams were destroyed on the morning of 7th October, when they were attacked by Hamas at Kibbutz Nir Oz.”

Israel newspaper, Haaretz reported on 18 November that he was murdered in his home on the morning of the attack, saying, “His body was conclusively identified only last week", though it was at first suspected that he had been taken hostage.

Venance Frederick, team leader of a group of Tanzanian students which included Mtenga and Mollel, wrote on his Facebook page, "As a team leader of his group, I received with deep sadness the information of his death. As a family, we’re heartbroken and we mourn his death. We Tanzanians are all bereaved. Rest in eternal peace, CF Mtenga.”

Speaking to the SA Jewish Report from Israel, Fredrick said that Mtenga and Mollel were two of a group of 260 interns on a program that is part of a cooperation plan between the governments of Tanzania and Israel. “It’s an agro-studies program in Israel. The program is an agriculture-based internship. We’re brought by the Tanzanian government to learn the sophisticated means of production in agriculture and agri-business,” he said.

“We were on the program for the year 2023/2024. We travelled in groups: Clemence, Joshua, and I travelled to Israel on 13 September 2023 as the second group, and I was the team leader. Joshua and Clemence lived at Kibbutz Nahal Oz at the cattle farms since we arrived in Israel, but they weren’t living together.”

Describing his experience of the morning of the 7th October, Fredrick says, “It was on Saturday morning of the Jewish holiday. My colleagues and I lived in Sderot, but some like Joshua were on the farm. Clemence was waiting for the afternoon shift with other Thais at their apartment."

“We were awakened by sounds of bombs, missiles, sirens, and strangers were shooting on the road to the Sderot police station. It was very scary."

“We stayed in a safe room for about a week, but our coordinator in Israel helped us to get food. He created a WhatsApp group chat that added all the Tanzanian students to know their whereabouts, but unfortunately, some of our friends reported the absence of two of our friends. Their WhatsApp last-seen information showed up at about 10:00. We checked them through their phone numbers and WhatsApp without success.”

Ezekiel Kitiku, a fellow Tanzanian intern, was living and working with Mtenga on Kibbutz Nir Oz in the dairy farm. He told BBC that as the air raid sirens sounded on October 7 and he ran for shelter, he texted Mtenga and Mollel. “They told me that there were so many rockets coming from Gaza — and that they were going to the shelters too,” he said. But a few hours later, they were no longer answering.

He was not the first Tanzania to die in foreign conflicts. Last year, Nemes Tarimo, 33, another Tanzanian student who had been in prison in Russia was killed fighting for Russia's Wagner Group of mercenaries in Ukraine. The Group recruited hundreds of convicts to fight in Ukraine in exchange for freedom after frontline duty.

Tanzanian media reported that Nemes Tarimo, 33, had been arrested on drug-related charges in Russia and was promised release from prison term if he fought in Ukraine. Tarimo's relatives said that in late December 2022 they received information about his death from some of his friends in Russia. They later got confirmation of his death from the Tanzanian Embassy in Moscow. They said there were reports that Tarimo was killed in the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, a site of heavy fighting in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Last year, a Zambian national who had also been arrested on drug charges and convicted in Russia died in Ukraine while fighting for Wagner. Like Tarimo, Lemekhani Nyirenda was promised his freedom if he worked as a mercenary. Several other Africans in Russian prisons reportedly were recruited by Wagner to fight in Ukraine.

Jean Claude Sangwa, a 27-year-old student from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, moved to Luhansk University in the Ukrainian breakaway region last year to study economics. But when the head of the Kremlin-controlled, self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic announced a full military mobilisation of the region on 19 February 2022, Sangwa, together with two friends and fellow students from DRC and Central African Republic, decided to join the local militia and take up arms against Ukraine,

He told the Guardian, “I joined because the war came to our republic. What should I have done? I am a man and have to fight,” Sangwa said in broken Russian. “The whole world is fighting against Russia,” he added when asked why he had decided to join the militia.

Shortly after joining the Luhansk militia, Sangwa was sent into combat and spent two months fighting. During that time, many of his African friends assumed that he was dead and posted goodbye messages on his social media accounts.

Three days after the war started, on 27 February, Sangwa’s photo was posted online by Find Your Own, a Telegram channel created by the Ukrainian internal affairs ministry to identify captured and killed soldiers. The post said Sangwa had been killed by Ukrainian forces alongside another African soldier.

“The Ukrainian enemy found my military ID card and said I was dead. I am alive, as you can see,” Sangwa said. He is currently back patrolling the streets in Luhansk as a member of the militia. Other African migrants were caught up in fighting in Libya and in the Middle East.

Late last year, a Zambian student was killed in Ukraine while fighting with the Wagner Group. he body of a 23-year-old Zambian student who died while fighting for the Russian army in the war in Ukraine has been returned home.

The body of Lemekani Nyirenda, who was studying nuclear engineering in Russia before joining the military, arrived at Kenneth Kaunda International Airport in Lusaka on Sunday. Although he had been a student, Lemekani was convicted of drug trafficking in April 2020 and sentenced to 9 years in prison. He was later pardoned through a special amnesty on condition that he participate in the war and he was killed while fighting in Ukraine

Last month, Reuters and Human Rights Watch reported that Saudi Arabian border guards killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants, including women and children, who attempted to enter the kingdom along its mountainous border with Yemen.

In a 73-page report, the rights group said Saudi guards used explosive weapons to kill some migrants and shot at others from close range. It compiled testimony from 38 Ethiopians who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023, as well as four relatives or friends of migrants. Hundreds of Ethiopian migrants cross the Red Sea to go to Yemen from where they cross they attempt to cross the mountainous border to Saudi Arabia in search of work.