A Kenyan woman hacked off her four-year-old son’s head on Wednesday, apparently furious that the young child had mislaid a 10-shilling (15 United States cents) coin, police and witnesses said. Witnesses said the 35-year-old mother beheaded her child with a machete in the Gatundu region, about 30km north-west of the capital, Nairobi.
The World Bank has approved an -million credit to help Kenya in its fight against Aids, which the government says kills hundreds of people daily. The money will be used to improve governance in the state-run National Aids Control Council, which coordinates activities of NGOs involved in the fight against Aids. Some of the money will also be given as grants to NGOs.
Kenyan police on Tuesday said they had shot dead at least 25 suspected members of the Mungiki criminal gang since last week, after at least 13 people were killed in a surge of violence blamed on the group. Thursday’s conviction of a former Mungiki leader on weapons charges ended a brief lull in the slaughter.
Kenyan police on Tuesday killed two suspected members of a banned sect blamed for a string of recent murders and beheadings in a mounting crackdown across the East African nation. Police Commander Tito Kilonzo said officers trailed suspected Mungiki gang members from the outskirts of the capital, Nairobi.
Rebels in Ethiopia’s remote eastern Somali region accused the government on Monday of using war planes to bomb three villages, killing about 40 people, in an escalating offensive against the insurgents. The government said it had the Ogaden National Liberation Front ”on the run”, but denied using planes during fighting in the poor and arid region.
Lasting peace in Sudan will not be possible unless the fractious country takes serious steps to address alarming environmental woes, said a United Nations report published on Friday. Decades of war have devastated Africa’s largest country and fresh competition for its resources continue to fuel conflict, said the report.
Eleven people were killed in and around the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, during a surge in violence overnight, including two people found beheaded and eight killed in a shootout, police said on Friday. Three people — including the two who were beheaded — were found slain in Banana Hill on the outskirts of Nairobi.
Kenya is set to receive oil from Libya at preferential rates according to a bilateral agreement signed earlier this month between the leaders of the two countries. Insiders in the oil industry say this makes it likely that Kenya will award the contract for the establishment of a petroleum facility of $45-million to a Libya-connected investor.
A Kenyan court on Thursday jailed the former leader of a banned sect blamed for a string of beheadings and murders in recent months, judicial sources said. Amid a nationwide crackdown on the Mungiki gang, Nairobi principal magistrate Rosemary Mutoka slapped a five-year prison sentence on Maina Njenga for illegal possession of arms.
Kenyan police arrested 5 000 people in a crackdown on a banned sect blamed for grisly murders, local media reported on Wednesday. Police swooped into Nairobi’s Mathare slum after the killings and subsequent beheadings of at least half a dozen people by the outlawed Mungiki sect.
Last year was one of the worst on record for refugees and the crisis is deepening in 2007 thanks to conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan’s Darfur region. But the accelerating return of refugees to their homes in south Sudan in 2007 — some after more than two decades — is one bright spot in the otherwise bad year.
The chief prosecutor of the Rwanda genocide court has requested that the cases of two fugitives indicted by the tribunal be transferred to European countries, where they are believed to be hiding, officials said on Monday. The cases of Wenceslas Munyeshyaka and Laurent Bucyibaruta had been sealed by the court until late last week.
Two Kenyan police officers believed to have been kidnapped by Islamist fighters have been found murdered on the border with Somalia, police said on Thursday. ”At 7.30am [local time] this morning, the two officers were found murdered on a hill about 500m inside Kenya,” Kenya police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe said.
Kenyan police said on Tuesday they had arrested three people following a suspected suicide bombing the day before that killed at least one person and wounded dozens in the capital, Nairobi. The rush-hour explosion on Monday occurred a few hundred metres from where a truck bomb ripped through the former US embassy in 1998.
Rights group Amnesty International condemned Kenyan police on Tuesday for the execution-style killing of more than 30 people in last week’s crackdown on the deadly Mungiki gang in a Nairobi slum. Hundreds of police officers went into the Mathare shanty-town on two raids, shooting dead at least 33 people.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Monday called for urgent action to save Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest fresh-water lake, which is facing decline in water levels due to human activities. The lake, which provides livelihoods for about 30-million people in the shoreline countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, has suffered a dramatic fall in water levels since 2003.
A blast in central Nairobi killed at least one person on Monday and police on the scene said they believed it could have been a suicide bombing. Police commissioner Hussein Ali said five or six other people were critically injured after the explosion outside the Ambassadeur hotel in the central business district.
Eyeing his cellphone with a mixture of suspicion and amazement, Paul Kangethe reads and rereads the SMS he has just received. ”I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Kangethe says of the alert that instructs him to report to the nearest cellphone shop to retrieve money his brother-in-law sent him just moments ago. Kangethe is one of more than 65 000 registered users of M-Pesa, a mobile money-transfer system.
Hundreds of people carrying their possessions in makeshift carts fled on Friday from Kenya’s Mathare slum, where at least 33 people have died in a police crackdown on Kenya’s deadly Mungiki gang. At least 500 police officers tore through the shantytown in Nairobi on Thursday, shooting dead at least 11 people.
Does electronic learning (e-learning) threaten to displace the teacher? This question emerged at an international conference held in Nairobi last week, attended by 1Â 400 people from 88 countries. The latest in information communication technology (ICT) with a focus on education, training and development was showcased.
Kenyan police tore through a Nairobi slum on Thursday, firing rifles and tearing down shacks in the third day of a crackdown on a stronghold of the Mungiki criminal gang blamed for a wave of beheadings, witnesses said. Hundreds of police and paramilitary officers carrying automatic weapons and clubs thronged the Mathare slum.
Kenyan police faced protests on Wednesday after killing 22 people in a slum believed to be a stronghold of the Mungiki gang, branded ”agents of the devil” by a government minister. Police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe said officers had shown ”restraint” while flushing out known members of the group.
Kenyan police have killed at least 21 suspected members of a banned sect in a Nairobi slum in retaliation for the killing of two police officers, a police spokesperson said on Tuesday. ”Following the killing of two police officers … 21 people who were resisting arrest were killed” overnight, said national police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe.
Somali pirates who have been holding a Taiwan-flagged fishing vessel since mid-May killed one of the 16 crew members because the ship’s owners have not paid a ransom, a maritime official said on Monday. The pirates threatened to kill other crew members if their demands are not met, said Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan chapter of the Seafarers’ Assistance Programme.
Many in Africa expressed disappointment at Wednesday’s news that former United States trade envoy Robert Zoellick is to replace Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, saying the job should have gone to a developing country. But there was also hope that Zoellick’s experience on African trade issues could bring benefits.
Pirates captured an Indian dhow close to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, a Kenyan maritime official said on Friday, in the latest raid off one of the world’s most dangerous coastlines. Andrew Mwangura, director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, said he had no information about the crew or cargo aboard the vessel, the Al Haqeeq.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe celebrated a landmark agreement by Africa’s biggest trade bloc on Wednesday with a favourite pastime — attacking the West. ”Where does Europe get all the cotton it wears and the tea the British call their own — English tea? I want to know in which part of Britain tea is grown and to this day I have not found it,” he said.
Africa’s biggest trade bloc Comesa (Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa) approved a common external tariff system on Wednesday, clearing a major hurdle for a customs union intended to boost trade in some of the world’s poorest nations.
Leaders from Africa’s main trading bloc met on Tuesday to discuss ways of enhancing its free trade zone, including steps to a customs union, at a two-day summit amid widespread regional tensions. Nine heads of state and government attended the summit and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was appointed vice-chairperson.
Villagers found heads placed on poles and body parts scattered in bushes in six murders the media blamed on Tuesday on an outlawed sect notorious for killing and extortion. People in the country’s central region found the heads and other remains after attacks on Sunday and Monday.
Two Ethiopian rebel groups have said they killed 157 troops in the east of the country this month, a claim denied by the government on Tuesday. The Oromo Liberation Front and the Ogaden National Liberation Front said they had launched several joint attacks in recent weeks.
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf will allow members of his country’s ousted Islamic movement to participate in the country’s upcoming reconciliation conference — as long as they are selected by their clans and renounce violence, an Italian official said on Saturday.