An oil tanker truck rolled down a hill and smashed into four minibuses in Kenya, killing 29 people and injuring more than 30, police said on Friday. The tanker’s driver had stopped to refuel on Thursday when the vehicle started rolling, police chief Grace Kaindi said in Kisii, about 270km west of the capital, Nairobi.
Entering Nairobi’s fetid slums the senses are first assaulted by a gagging stench and the sight of rubbish everywhere, some even hanging from trees or smouldering in acrid fires. The city government does not recognise the ”informal settlements” where more than 60% of the population live, so no services are provided and no garbage collected.
Seventy-one Ugandan soldiers were killed and another 41 injured, many seriously, when their huge truck crashed into a concrete barrier at the side of a mountain road, a spokesperson said on Monday. ”It was a trailer and the soldiers were changing location from eastern Uganda. Apparently no one escaped unhurt,” army spokesperson Major Felix Kulayigye said.
The number of Somalis in need of humanitarian aid in the conflict-riddled nation has catapulted by 50% to 1,5-million, famine monitors said on Friday. As insecurity continues to choke the delivery of aid, the donor-funded Food Security Analysis Unit said the country’s breadbasket regions suffered from multiple shocks spurred by poor harvest, rains and instability.
An international human rights group has accused President Yoweri Museveni’s government of promoting ”state homophobia” in Uganda and urged the repeal of a colonial-era law against sodomy. Human Rights Watch’s attack added to a fierce social debate in the East African nation, where the gay community has been increasingly vocal in demanding rights.
Most of the 10 000 refugees who fled to Uganda from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Tuesday have returned home, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said on Thursday. UNHCR said more than 8 500 refugees went back on Wednesday, a day after fleeing their country fearing fresh violence there.
The Kenyan president refused on Wednesday to approve legislation that has widely been condemned as an attack on independent media because it would allow Kenyan courts to compel reporters to reveal their sources. President Mwai Kibaki rejected the Bill a week after hundreds of journalists protested while wearing black gags.
They’ve become as much a symbol of Africa’s landscape as the stereotypical lions and plains. Discarded plastic bags — in the billions — flutter from thorn-bushes across the continent, and clog up cities from Cape Town to Casablanca. South Africa was once producing seven billion bags a year and Kenya not so long ago churned out about 4 000 tonnes of polythene bags a month.
A crowd burned a church compound on Friday in one of Africa’s largest slums after a long-running land dispute flared into violence, witnesses and police said. Nobody was injured. Police said there was a dispute between the local Nubian community, which is mainly Muslim, and the Presbyterian Church over land ownership.
Kenya has cut malaria deaths among children under five by 44% on 2002 levels thanks largely to the increased use of insecticide treated nets (INTs), the government said on Thursday. The Health Ministry said the distribution of 13,4-million INTs over the past five years among children and pregnant women had helped curtail infections, a key success against a disease threatening 40% of the world’s population.
Kenya’s main opposition coalition has split into two factions ahead of a presidential election in December, boosting President Mwai Kibaki’s chances of re-election, politicians said on Wednesday. After months of feuding between opposition presidential aspirants Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka, the pair have parted ways.
When residents of Mathare slum in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi staged a recent protest over a five-day water shortage, the police moved to break the demonstration, firing tear gas and arresting some of the protestors. The July 31 police action in the Bondeni area, however, did not address the cause of the problem.
Kenya’s Aids prevalence rate dropped to 5,1% last year from 5,9% in 2005, mainly due to the increased roll-out of antiretrovirals, the national Aids council said Tuesday. The state-run National Aids Control Council said the growing use of life-prolonging therapy averted about 57 000 deaths in 2006.
The Somali government is trying to create a Baghdad-style safe ”Green Zone” in Mogadishu to protect senior officials and foreign visitors from insurgent attacks, Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi said on Tuesday. In an interview with Reuters, the Somali premier also accused United States-based Human Rights Watch of ”abusing” his government.
African nations have been falling over themselves to pledge support for an expanded peacekeeping mission in Sudan’s Darfur region under United Nations and African Union auspices. At least six countries have quickly promised troops. But in arguably Africa’s second biggest trouble spot, Somalia, the rush to supply Darfur has a bitter ring.
Rescue teams searched on Monday for 13 people missing after weekend landslides buried a village in western Kenya but a humanitarian worker said it was unlikely they would be found alive. ”We don’t hold out any hope of finding survivors,” said Tony Mwangi, a spokesperson for the Kenya Red Cross.
Ethiopia’s Ogaden rebels warned oil companies interested in the volatile but energy-rich region on Wednesday not to be lulled into a ”false sense of security” by the government, saying their forces were well armed. The Ogaden National Liberation Front said the government had lost control of Ogaden. The rebels warned oil companies to stay away.
Beating the air with her homemade net, Aicha Ali chases a swirling black and turquoise butterfly. Far from indulging in a frivolous pastime, this Kenyan mother is earning crucial family income. "I like capturing butterflies; it’s fun because I make some money," she says, puffing as she wipes the sweat pearling on her nose after a frantic chase in the forest’s sandy trails.
Agricultural scientists unveiled a cheap kit on Thursday to let African farmers test crops for a deadly poison that makes them unfit to eat and costs the continent millions of dollars in lost exports. Aflatoxin, a toxic chemical produced by a fungus, develops on maize, groundnuts, sorghum and cassava during hot weather and droughts.
A Kenyan court ruled on Wednesday that Thomas Cholmondeley, descendant of one of the country’s most famous white settlers, should present his defence in a murder case that has stoked longstanding racial tensions. The great grandson of Lord Delamere has admitted shooting Kenyan stonemason Robert Njoya, whom he accused of poaching on his Soysambu farm.
A strong earthquake hit East Africa on Tuesday, the latest in the region in several days, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said. The USGS said the quake struck in northern Tanzania, 167km from the western town of Arusha, and measured 6,1 on the Richter scale of magnitude.
Africa needs a ”green revolution” to double agricultural output and end chronic food insecurity in the world’s poorest continent, former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan said on Monday. The former top diplomat is the chairperson of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, set up last year with a -million grant.
Crime and violence are at crisis levels in Kenya in the build-up to elections as gangs terrorise the population and ”trigger-happy” police respond with impunity, human rights groups said on Wednesday. The Kenya Human Rights Network said 300 criminals, police officers, victims of land clashes and suspected members of a banned sect were killed in the last six months.
Five people were killed in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, police said on Tuesday, in a widening crackdown on a criminal gang blamed for a horrifying spate of murders and beheadings. The five were shot dead and two pistols recovered after carjacking and robbery incidents in the capital’s Ngong and Balozi suburbs overnight, police said.
Politicians from leading parties and prominent human rights activists all seem to agree that the time has come for Kenya to abolish capital punishment. But as they continue to talk, courts continue to pass down death sentences, swelling the numbers on death row. On June 21, Justice and Constitutional Affairs Assistant Minister Danson Mungatana told journalists here that the government is committed to abolishing the death penalty.
Kenya police on Monday said they had killed eight suspected members of a gang blamed for a spate of murders and beheadings, as part of a widening crackdown. Once a religious group of dreadlocked youths who embraced traditional rituals, the politically linked Mungiki sect has fractured into a gang notorious for criminal activities.
After a three-month break the trial of a British aristocrat charged with murder in the shooting of a trespasser on his ancestral ranch resumed in Nairobi on Wednesday. Thomas Cholmondeley, son of the fifth Baron Delamere and great-grandson of Kenya’s most prominent early settler, is charged with killing poacher Robert Njoya in May 2006.
A small plane flying to Kenya’s Masai Mara game reserve crashed on Tuesday and three people were killed, a tour operator said. The dead were two passengers on a safari holiday, both Germans living in Switzerland, and the Kenyan pilot, said Will Jones, managing director of British-based tour operator Journeys by Design.
Three United Nations agencies on Tuesday appealed for -million in donations to combat a malnutrition crisis at two major Kenyan refugee camps. ”The malnutrition crisis that we are witnessing … is the cumulative effect of years of recurrent budgetary shortfalls,” Eddie Gedalof from the Kenya office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said.
Kenya is trying to clamp down on a sect, the Mungiki, accused of occultist rituals and beheadings, but which is also seen as a threat to stability. Analysts say the Mungiki is more of an organised criminal gang with political ties than a sect and they warn that such groups could multiply in the crime-prone country.
Kenya’s annual inflation rose to 11,1% in June from 6,3% in May on the back of price increases in food, alcohol and tobacco, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. However, underlying inflation that excludes food prices fell to 5,2% from 5,7% in May.
Gunmen killed four people in Nairobi’s largest slum, raising fears of a possible raid by a dreaded sect blamed for a string of murders and beheadings, police said on Thursday. Police commander Herbert Khaemba said the gunmen attacked Kibera slums, home to at least 800Â 000 people, and killed four after a botched robbery attempt.