CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaeda militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by the Associated Press. Some of the detainees were swept up by Ethiopian troops that drove a radical Islamist government out of neighbouring Somalia late last year.

Faltering peace talks in southern Sudan aimed at ending one of Africa’s most brutal conflicts suffered a new blow Friday after Ugandan rebels pulled out, claiming their security was threatened and they were no longer welcome by Sudanese mediators.

Ethiopian security forces massacred 193 people — triple the official death toll — during anti-government protests following last year’s election, a senior judge appointed to investigate the violence said on Wednesday. Unarmed protesters were shot, beaten and strangled to death, said Wolde-Michael Meshesha, vice-chairperson of the government-backed inquiry.

More than 120-million Africans face starvation because much of the £3-billion (,6-billion) in aid spent each year to help them is wasted, an aid organisation said on Tuesday. International aid arrives too late, is targeted at the wrong things and is usually only a short term measure that doesn’t tackle the root cause of hunger said humanitarian aid organisation Care International UK.

An elderly nun who was gunned down at the hospital where she worked in Somalia’s capital was ”specifically targeted before being executed by gunmen lying in wait”, a hospital official said on Monday. Willy Huber, regional director of the Austrian-funded hospital where 65-year-old Sister Leonella had worked for four years, said the killing was not random.

Eritrean police have arrested several United Nations peacekeepers who allegedly were trying to smuggle people out of Eritrea, the information ministry said. An unspecified number of staff from the UN’s Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea were seized as they tried to cross into arch-rival Ethiopia, said Tuesday’s statement on the Eritrean information ministry website.

At least 18 people were killed in northern Kenya during cross-border cattle raids by about 300 armed bandits from Ethiopia, officials said on Monday. Most of the dead were raiders who tried to steal thousands of animals from several villages close to the Ethiopian border, 650km from the capital, Nairobi, they added.

A cholera outbreak has killed at least 238 people and infected some 8 923 others in the past three months in southern Sudan, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said. Although the outbreak has been contained in two main southern towns, it has spread to other areas, the United Nations said in a statement on Wednesday.