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Holly Andrzejewski hadn’t yet welcomed her and her family’s first guests to the Atlantic Inn on Hatteras Island when she had to start rescheduling them, as Hurricane Erin neared North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Tuesday and threatened to whip up wild waves and tropical force winds.

Although the monster storm is expected to stay offshore, evacuations were ordered on such barrier islands along the Carolina coast as Hatteras as authorities warned the storm could churn up dangerous rip currents and swamp roads with waves of 15 feet (4.6 meters).

Andrzejewski and her husband purchased the bed-and-breakfast, known as the oldest inn on the island, less than a week ago. By Monday they had brought in all the outdoor furniture and made sure their daughter and her boyfriend, who are the innkeepers, had generators, extra water and flashlights as they stayed behind to keep an eye on the property.

“It’s just one of those things where you know this is always a possibility and it could happen, and you just make the best out of it. Otherwise you wouldn’t live at the beach,” said Andrzejewski, who will also remain on the island, at her home about a 15 minutes’ drive away.

Erin lashed part of the Caribbean with rain and wind Monday. Forecasters are confident it will curl north and away from the eastern US, but tropical storm and surge watches were issued for much of the Outer Banks.

Officials at the Wrightsville Beach, near Wilmington, North Carolina, reported to the National Weather Service rescuing at least 60 swimmers from rip currents Monday.

By early Tuesday, Erin had lost some strength from previous days and had maximum sustained winds of 195kph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. It was about 1,105 kilometers southwest of Bermuda and 1,240 kilometers south-southeast of Cape Hatteras and was moving northwest at a slower 11kph.

A tropical storm warning remained in effect for the Turks and Caicos Islands, where government services were suspended, some ports were closed and residents were ordered to stay home.

On North Carolina’s Outer Banks, coastal flooding was expected to begin Tuesday and continue through Thursday.

The evacuations on Hatteras Island and Ocracoke came at the height of tourist season on the thin stretch of low-lying barrier islands that jut into the Atlantic Ocean and are increasingly vulnerable to storm surges.

A year ago, Hurricane Ernesto stayed hundreds of miles offshore yet still produced high surf and swells that caused coastal damage.

This time there are concerns that several days of heavy surf, high winds and waves could wash out parts of the main highway. Some routes could be impassible for days.

This is the first evacuation for Ocracoke since Hurricane Dorian in 2019 caused the most damage in the island’s recorded history.

Tommy Hutcherson, who owns the community’s only grocery store, said the island has mostly bounced back. He’s optimistic this storm won’t be as destructive.

“But you just never know. I felt the same way about Dorian and we really got smacked,” he said.

Scientists have linked the rapid intensification of hurricanes in the Atlantic to climate change. Global warming is causing the atmosphere to hold more water vapor and is spiking ocean temperatures, and warmer waters give hurricanes fuel to unleash more rain and strengthen more quickly.

Bermuda will experience the most severe threat Thursday evening, said Phil Rogers, director of the Bermuda Weather Service. By then, waters could swell up to 7 meters.

“Surfers, swimmers and boaters must resist the temptation to go out. The waters will be very dangerous and lives will be placed at risk,” acting Minister of National Security Jache Adams said.

LOME: Militants from Burkina Faso have stepped up their assaults on northern Togo since the beginning of the year, with the Togolese government tight-lipped on their covert infiltration.

Keen not to sap the morale of the Togolese soldiers fighting the incursion, the small west African nation’s authorities have offered little in the way of official comment or figures on violence by militants, who have gained ground since their first deadly attack in the country in 2022.

In a rare admission, Togolese Foreign Minister Robert Dussey recently said Islamist fighters had killed at least 62 people since January — more than double the deaths the government recorded in the whole of 2023.

Those losses reflect a surge in militants unrest in Togo’s north, at a time when armed fighters linked to Al-Qaeda or the Daesh group are gaining ground across the wider west African region.

For Togolese political scientist and essayist Madi Djabakate, the lack of coverage in the Togolese press stems from the government’s “policy of informational lockdown.”

Togo’s High Authority for Broadcasting and Communication (HAAC) has “expressly forbidden journalists from mentioning the attacks or human or material losses, so as not to demoralize the troops engaged on the ground,” he told AFP.



Like neighboring Benin, Togo is confronted with an overspill of violence from eastern Burkina Faso, where militants run rampant.

In 2024, Burkina Faso saw the most deaths of any country in the world from “terrorism” for the second year running, with 1,532 victims out of a worldwide total of 7,555, according to the Global Terrorism Index.

Located near the Togolese border, the Burkinabe province of Kompienga is home to a powerful branch of the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, known by its Arabic acronym, JNIM.

Just over the frontier, Kpendjal prefecture is the Togolese region worst-hit by militant attacks, which west African security specialist Mathias Khalfaoui said was a result of the porous border.

Yet in the past year the violence has spread beyond the borderlands.

In a study for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a think tank associated with Germany’s conservative CDU party, Khalfaoui said the militant advance could easily go under the radar “because of its slow and methodical nature.”

“Until 2023, the danger was still concentrated in the territories directly bordering Burkina Faso,” the analyst said.

Since May 2024, he said, the miliants have extended their influence further south, toward the nearby prefectures of Oti and South Oti.



Khalfaoui said the expansion of the militants’ scope in Togo was “becoming clear.”

“We have to go back to December 2022 to find a month when, to our knowledge, there was no attack,” Khalfaoui said in his study.

But tackling the issue is a challenge given the dire economic situation of Togo’s north, the poorest and least developed part of an already impoverished nation, Khalfaoui added.

Djabakate, the Togolese political scientist, agreed, arguing that the country’s current approach was “essentially military and repressive.”

“The affected prefectures, notably Kpendjal and West Kpendjal, suffer from a structural absence of the state,” Djabakate said.

“Civil servants posted to these areas perceive their assignment as a punishment, given the harsh living conditions and the absence of public services,” he added.

Togo has deployed around 8,000 soldiers to the affected region, while the defense budget ballooned from 8.7 percent of GDP in 2017 to 17.5 percent in 2022, according to Foreign Minister Dussey.

The government has also attempted to improve living conditions for Togolese in the north, through an emergency aid program launched in 2023.

But the situation is unlikely to improve without better coordination on tackling militancy between countries in a divided west Africa, according to analysts in the region.