C Bryson Hull

Their uniforms said police but their actions said firefighters. The four officers sauntered to the centre of the buzzing crowd and did all that was left to do: stamp out the flames roasting yet another victim of mob justice in Kenya.

A United States air strike in Somalia missed its main target of three top al-Qaeda suspects but killed up to 10 of their allies, a senior American official said on Thursday. A US warplane on Monday attacked a village in southern Somalia in an attempt to destroy an al-Qaeda cell accused of bombing two US embassies and an Israeli-owned hotel in East Africa.

Ethiopia said on Tuesday its troops will stay for another few weeks in Somalia to help the government pacify the Horn of Africa nation, but the Islamists they ousted in a brief war vowed to ''rise from the ashes''. The Islamists, who fled their last stronghold on Monday after a two-week conflict, said they refused a government offer to surrender.

Ethiopian troops will stay in Somalia for another few weeks to help the victorious government pacify the Horn of Africa nation after a two-week war to oust militant Islamists, Addis Ababa said on Tuesday. Tightening the net on defeated Somali Islamic Courts Council fighters fleeing south, neighbouring Kenya said it had sealed its long and porous north-eastern border.

Anarchic Somalia has confounded United States foreign policy once again, leaving Washington struggling to find a coherent approach to a state whose internal turmoil threatens to destabilise the Horn of Africa. The Bush administration appears to have realised that its ''one-size-fits-all'' approach to countering global terrorist threats failed in Somalia.

Somalia's political stand-off may erupt into a region-wide conflict involving al-Qaeda unless its fragile government can bring Islamists into its ranks, a think-tank said on Friday. Foreign states, particularly Ethiopia and Eritrea, must stop supporting the rival factions or risk inflaming the situation, the International Crisis Group said in a report.