this is the w. news live from berlin european union is placing its bets on vaccine passports e.u. leaders agree on the need for a coronavirus vaccination certificates german chancellor merkel says they could be ready in time for people to take their summer holiday is also kind of. amnesty international says it has evidence of the worst atrocities yet against civilians into g.o.p.'s to great region he says troops from eritrea and supplant.

thing. as welcome to the program we'll bring you those stories in a moment but 1st we have breaking news coming in from nigeria gunman there have a ducted several 100 schoolgirls in what is the latest mass kidnapping in the region the abduction happened at a boarding school in some far a state in the early hours of friday eyewitnesses have told local media that hundreds of armed men attacked security guards before they took the girls groups known locally as bandits have been ramping up attacks on schools and kidnappings in recent months. before i'm not joined by w.'s tomi oladipo who's been based in and covered nigeria for many years what do we know so far.

well we know that this attack happened overnight in zamfara state that's in the northwest of the country the. group attacked the school and took away this large group of students we know it's a girls' school so far the government there saying they have not been able to tally the number of missing students but this is a part of the country where there are lots of on groups operating and this is just the latest and i think it should be a wake up call to the government but this is just the latest in a series of attacks that we've seen happening oh if you look at this series do we know or can assume who the kidnappers likely are and what they what their demands are well so far it doesn't appear as if there's is this would be a group with some kind of conventional ideology of our state for a long time for years and had lots of groups that go around communities attacking communities raiding them dining down there their villages and sometimes even up

ducting people and i think with the recent cases where we've seen abductions grab the world headlines this would be possibly one of those groups or you know a repeat where we see a group knowing that they are able to get the headlines and possibly a demand a massive ransom which it looks like these groups are seeking and i think that's why they would carry out this kind of attack well this is one of several reasons as you said large scale kidnappings not sure what's behind all this. i think the 1st thing we have to look at is a breakdown of the security structure in the country the fact that the country's unable to secure itself the government or the security forces have not been able to secure the people around the country the north east of the country of course we know this is boko haram there are many other parts of the country wavin these kinds of abductions happen maybe on a smaller scale but they are so frequent and it's clear that the government has not

been able to to secure many parts in 2014 after the famous or infamous chibok schoolgirl kidnapping that was initiated brought up called the safe schools initiative and that was supposed to protect schools around the country which is in yet another school so many years later the fact that these kinds of initiatives have not borne fruit and people around the country are still vulnerable it's not just wealthy people it's not just business people it's not just foreigners but even people who rule remote places where they you know how low income areas are also affected by this and i think it's a sign of the breakdown of the entire security structure in the country that argues tony aleppo thanks so much back here in europe e.u. leaders have agreed to develop a covert 19 vaccine passport that could ease border crossings and allow people more

freedom to travel again you leaders met for virtual summits to discuss coordination they're already under pressure over a lagging vaccine rollout germany's chancellor says it will be at least 3 months before a vaccine possible system is up and running. with slow backs in nations coronavirus variance border chaos and summer holidays at risk there was no shortage of talking points at this virtual e.u. summit during a 4 hour video called leaders trying to find a united way forward in the fight against the pandemic the pressure is intense concerns can't just be waved to side with the e.u. lagging behind them vaccination numbers and new variants spreading rapidly across the continent the b. 117 is by now in all member states but one the south african variant is in 14 member states and the brazilian variant in 7 so there's a lot of challenges ahead of us apart from ramping up vaccine manufacturing and

easing production bottlenecks the e.u. will put more energy into detecting these more contagious and dangerous mutations through a dedicated program. with the spring on its way tourism has made it back to the agenda greek prime minister kitty hawk is was one of the 1st leaders to call for an e.u. wide vaccination certificates in the attempt to east travel restrictions and save the summer holiday season that's something all leaders could get behind but how and when exactly this vaccine passport could be rolled out is uncertain. we expected to be done by summer i am not a programmer so i cannot make any guarantees like i cannot guarantee vaccine deliveries but the political requirements are to reach this goal within the next few months. but for the moment member states have agreed that tourism and all non-essential travel is not an option. for more on this.

brussels phenomenon when will we see these possible. well presumably within the next 3 months that is what german chancellor angela merkel is after the meeting but she didn't want to commit to any specific date because as she stressed there are a lot of detail is are still being worked on in berlin but also in brussels the european commission would like to see and a you why it's so difficult and if not then they want to make sure that national certificates will be wickedness in every member state but i think it's fair to say that what we saw yesterday was real progress comparators to all the discussions going all going on for weeks now we have this broader agreement that vixen certificates are coming. so when i have this passport in the summer as the chancellor indicates it will be able to travel the e.u. freely like you used to. well that's of course the key question but i don't have

any answer for you yet because that is something that the leaders did not agree on . that next into typical doesn't necessarily mean that you are allowed to travel french president mark home was also a bit skeptical saying that you know we have to make sure that no one is going to be discriminated against because we don't have enough vaccines because young people still have to be vaccinated but i think that that pressure is really growing from from different member states saying we need to open up travel we need to open up tourism. and chancellor sebastian courts want the european union that if there are not going to do it together. we'll go it alone. so. there's passport to get passports 1st you have to get a bar so nation so what have you leaders want to do about the birds the new slovaks

and roll out. well they said that anything that is necessary has to be done to speed up their role of to ramp up the production there is a new task force that has apparently the able been able to identify potential location that could be used to ramp up the production and also off underly and they had the european commission stress during that meeting that you know trying to calm down i think everyone that deliveries are increasing that we are going to see more vixens arriving in the next quarter but of course e.u. leaders are under a lot of pressure to deliver progress to deliver results to their populations and they were also talking about a possible complete export ban for big scenes but there was no a broad majority to introduce that because at the moment the european commission a commission is just controlling who is exporting think scenes out of the european

union but there is no export ban and it's not agreed upon that it's going to be one in the future. good she said at some phenomenal thank you alex. let's have a look now at some of the other stories making headlines this hour. there's been gunshots at a protest in myanmar's largest city young on local media say that police opened fire to disperse demonstrators in no immediate reports of casualties protesters have been taken to the streets since the elected government was overthrown in a military coup every 1st. u.s. president joe biden has phoned king solomon of saudi arabia for the 1st time since taking office. the u.s. is preparing to release an intelligence report on the killing of journalist jamal khashoggi the u.s. has previously singled out saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman as the likely orchestrator of the. russian opposition leader in

a valley has been moved from a moscow prison to an undisclosed detention center is lawyers say he has likely been taken to a penal colony of ali was sentenced to 2 years labor for breaching his parole while recovering in germany from a poisoning attack. satellite images show that hundreds of buildings were burned in the past week and if the o.p.'s northern take ray region red crosses marked the damaged buildings and another set of pictures shows the before and after they suggest that fighting is still raging in the disputed region although the ethiopian government says it has mostly stopped satellite images are being used to keep track of the conflict access to to grey is limited human rights organization embassy international says it is evidence that eritrea and troops massacred hundreds of people in the city of axim last november the group used satellite

images and witness accounts to document the atrocities. this family cut away they've escaped the fighting in ethiopia region and have found shelter in sudan. w. news met them back in november when they just arrived. at. coconuts and as a player we cried and our children cried with us and they wept in front of us so i think the shooting started while we were eating and we just had to leave. their home in ethiopia has seen almost 4 months of fighting between local rebel forces and the theater in military. allegedly receiving support by eritrean troops gaining an accurate picture of events in tikrit has been difficult to impossible journalists have been blocked from entering the region phone and internet services were at times cuts completely and humanitarian organizations have struggled to get

in. in early december un human rights chief michel basher lay said there is an urgent need for independent monitoring of the human rights situation in the t cry region for all necessary measures to protect civilians and for accountability for violations that came about 2 weeks too late for this woman and some 800 others in ethiopia's holy city of axim that's how many people are thought to have died in an alleged massacre near an ancient orthodox church a recent investigation by the associated press found that the perpetrators were soldiers from neighboring eritrea and a new report by amnesty international backs this up the human rights group says it's collected evidence that ira trained soldiers went on a rampage in acts i'm on the 28th of november after an earlier attack on them by a small group of rebel fighters knesset mary's church witness accounts describe them roaming the streets and shooting at fleeing civilians with automatic weapons and precision rifles i saw the people being shot on the ground when they were

running approximately 10 people or more all of them young men everyone was scared and run away. eritrea's government has denied its forces were involved in any massacre after the a.p. investigation was published the country's information minister called the story a horrendous lie relevant ethiopian institutions had long ascertained the utz a fallacy of the story he posted on twitter fighting in tikrit is said to be ongoing and it'll be hard to verify what really happened in x. and late november but in light of amnesty international's new allegations the eritrean government may face fresh questions about its involvement in this bloody conflict that's playing out away from the eyes of the world. before we go lady gaga is putting up a half a $1000000.00 reward for the return of her 2 french bulldogs it was stolen by a man who also shot and injured. is expected to fully recover from his injuries

lady gaga is known to be extremely protective of her dolls but he said i don't know whether the dogs have been targeted because of the celebrity although. that's it from me other news team here in berlin soon is of us going to have an update for you in 45 minutes out of his in berlin was forced. by probably oh and i'm game did you know that 17000000 land animals or killed worldwide in here but it's not just the animals that are suffering the school environment if you want to know how when clicked off the priest alcohol issues strange to us as we think is listening to our podcast on the.