Tim Cocks
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/ 1 April 2008

Uganda rebel postpones peace-deal signing

The leader of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels has delayed signing a peace deal in a setback to efforts to end one of Africa’s longest conflicts, officials and sources involved in talks said on Tuesday. Fugitive LRA chief Joseph Kony was due to sign a final peace accord on Thursday near his hide-out, but was reported to be sick.

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/ 28 January 2008

Kenya’s Rift Valley burns, death toll soars

Protests erupted in western Kenya and machete-wielding mobs faced off in the Rift Valley on Monday after scores died in ethnic violence, complicating mediation efforts by former United Nations boss Kofi Annan. In the normally peaceful Rift Valley town of Nakuru, a mortuary worker said on Monday that 64 corpses were lying in the morgue.

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/ 28 January 2008

Annan pushes mediation in Kenya

Kenyans in the Rift Valley town of Naivasha were braced for fresh violence on Monday after a spate of ethnic killings. At least 19 people were killed here on Sunday in battles between members of President Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe and Luos and Kalenjins who backed his rival Raila Odinga.

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/ 26 January 2008

Gunfire rocks Kenya town as death toll reaches 25

Gunfire rang out in Nakuru, Kenya, on Saturday and armed gangs manned roadblocks in the Rift Valley town where ethnic clashes have killed at least 25 people in 24 hours, witnesses said. Paramilitary police patrolled the provincial capital, which had previously been spared post-election violence that has killed around 700 people.

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/ 22 January 2008

Annan prepares to mediate in Kenya

Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan was due to arrive in Kenya on Tuesday to try to mediate in a post-poll crisis that has torn the country in two and triggered weeks of violence that has killed hundreds. A hotly disputed election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power last month amid cries from opposition leader Raila Odinga that he rigged it.

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/ 26 December 2007

Ebola panic spreads faster than the disease

Few diseases inspire as much panic as an outbreak of Ebola fever. In Uganda — where 100 000 people die of malaria each year — an epidemic of a new Ebola strain has killed just 36 people and infected 135 others, but is causing widespread terror. However, experts say much of the panic is overblown.

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/ 6 December 2007

Uganda Ebola: At least 22 dead, 93 infected

A new strain of the deadly Ebola virus is thought to have infected 93 people and killed at least 22 in Uganda, including a doctor and three other medical staff looking after patients, a health official said on Thursday. Dr Sam Zaramba, the government’s director of health services, said the doctor had died after looking after a patient in an isolation ward.