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ANTANANARIVO: Several thousand anti-government demonstrators marched on Thursday through Madagascar’s capital, several of them injured when police cracked down on the latest youth-led protest of the past two weeks.
The fresh rally came after the Gen Z movement called for a general strike and rejected President Andry Rajoelina’s attempts to defuse the tensions rocking the Indian Ocean Island.
The president has appointed a new prime minister and called for dialogue in a bid to quell the near-daily protests that erupted on September 25.
The unrest was sparked by anger over regular and lengthy power and water shortages and evolved into a broader anti-government movement.
Security forces charged at protesters with armored vehicles, firing tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the initial crowds of about 1,000 that gathered on Thursday near Lake Anosy and started marching toward the Ambohijatovo Gardens, AFP reporters saw.
Street battles later broke out between the police and demonstrators, who responded by throwing stones.
Tear gas fired near a maternity ward forced nursing staff to move premature babies to the back of the building, an AFP journalist saw.
At least four people were injured by rubber bullets and two by projectiles from stun grenades, according to AFP reporters on the ground and two local medical organizations.
A man was left unconscious on the ground after being chased and severely beaten by security forces in the neighboring district of Anosibe before being evacuated by the Red Cross.
Conflict monitoring group ACLED said the month of September saw the second highest level of protests in Madagascar since it began collecting data in 1997, surpassed only by a surge before the 2023 vote.
- ‘Problem is the system’ -

Hundreds of protesters again marched through the large southern coastal city of Toliara on Thursday, reports said.
“We’re still struggling,” said Heritiana Rafanomezantsoa, one of the marchers in Antananarivo.
“The problem is the system. Our lives haven’t improved since we gained independence from France,” the 35-year-old told AFP
Student Niaina Ramangason said Rajoelina — who himself came to power following an uprising in 2009 — was “selfish.”
“He makes promises but doesn’t keep them. I don’t believe in him anymore,” the 20-year-old said.
After initially adopting a conciliatory tone and dismissing his entire government, Rajoelina appointed a military officer as prime minister on October 6.
He said the country “no longer needs disturbances” and chose to make the first appointments in his new cabinet to the ministries of the armed forces, public security and armed police.
More than 200 civil society organizations said on Thursday they were “concerned about a military drift in the country’s governance, rather than a search for appeasement and an end to repression.”
- Death toll -

The United Nations said on September 29 that at least 22 people had been killed in the first days of protests, a toll Rajoelina disputed on Wednesday.
“There have been 12 confirmed deaths and all of these individuals were looters and vandals,” he told French-speaking television channel Reunion La Premiere.
The UN’s human rights office said some of the 22 victims were protesters or bystanders killed by security forces, while others had died in violence sparked by criminal gangs and looters in the wake of the demonstrations.
Twenty-eight protesters have been referred to the prosecutor’s office for formal charges, their lawyers said on Wednesday.
Five are in pre-trial detention in Tsiafahy prison, a jail described by Amnesty International as overcrowded and “hellish.”
The protest movement has issued Rajoelina with a list of demands that includes a public apology for the violence against them but no longer mentions its previous calls for him to step down.
Despite rich natural resources, nearly three quarters of Madagascar’s population of 32 million lived below the poverty line in 2022, according to World Bank figures.
The Indian Ocean island’s per capita GDP fell from $812 in 1960 to $461 in 2025, according to the World Bank.

BANGKOK: Myanmar’s military government on Thursday acknowledged attacking a religious festival held on the grounds of a school in central Myanmar, which witnesses said killed about two dozen people, including children, when improvised bombs were dropped by motorized paragliders.
A statement issued by the military’s information office blamed resistance forces opposed to army rule for the casualties in the Monday night attack, accusing them of “using civilians as human shields in their anti-government incitement campaigns.”
Neither the government nor its opponents reported any armed combat near the scene of the bombing.
The attack took place in Myanmar’s Sagaing region and had already been reported by the country’s independent media and international outlets, including The Associated Press. A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday declared that the “indiscriminate use of airborne munitions is unacceptable.”
Witnesses told the AP that the paragliders carried out two sorties, each time dropping two bombs on the primary school compound in the village of Bon To in Chaung-U township, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) west of Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city. The bombs, based on evidence from similar past attacks, were believed to have been 120 mm mortar rounds that explode on impact.
Initial reports of casualties varied slightly, but a member of a local resistance group who attended the event put the death toll at 24. Speaking on condition of anonymity to safeguard his personal security, he also estimated that 50 people had been wounded,
The resistance fighter said that children, villagers, members of local political activist groups and armed anti-military groups were among those killed.
The attack took place as more than 100 people were holding a traditional oil lamp prayer ceremony to mark the end of Buddhist Lent and using the occasion to call for the release of political prisoners and to protest the military’s planned election scheduled for December, which critics believe will be neither free nor fair.
The Sagaing region has been a stronghold of armed resistance since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. After peaceful demonstrations were put down with lethal force, many opponents of military rule took up arms, and large parts of the country are now enmeshed in civil war.
Much of the fighting against military rule is been carried out by locally formed armed resistance groups loosely connected in a nationwide People’s Defense Force.
A statement issued Thursday by the military’s information office accused the resistance group of forcing the public to stage the Monday protest and using them as human shields, and said that “the security forces chose to attack as a counterterrorism operation with the plan of minimal civilian casualties.”
The resistance fighter and a local resident who attended Monday’s ceremony rejected the military’s accusations that civilians were forced to protest, saying that people joined the ceremony of their own free will. Pro-democracy street protests remain common on special occasions in areas outside military control, including central regions such as Mandalay, Sagaing, and Magway, as well as Tanintharyi in the south.
In a separate statement, the military said that Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan on Thursday met with Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s military chief and acting president, to discuss the upcoming election, cooperation in humanitarian aid operations and peace efforts.
Malaysia currently chairs the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has been seeking without success to restore peace and stability to Myanmar.