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.
Lunchtime at an upmarket Kenyan safari lodge in what should be the slow off-season, and the dining room is packed with tourists from all over the world. Chattering excitedly in many languages as they watch antelope, buffalo and a giraffe grazing just a short distance away across a stone terrace, they are driving an unprecedented boom in a key sector of East Africa’s biggest economy.
Aid workers are only reaching about a third of the thousands of civilians afflicted by Mogadishu’s worst fighting for years, the United Nations’s top aid official said on Monday after visiting the Somali capital. John Holmes cut short his trip after bombs planted by suspected insurgents killed at least three people during Saturday’s visit.
Anthony Mitchell, who reported for The Associated Press (AP) from across East Africa, was remembered for his dedication to telling Africa’s story, and for his humour. Mitchell was among the 114 people that an official said on May 7 were killed in a plane crash over the weekend in Cameroon.
Seven South Africans were on board the Kenya Airways plane which crashed off the coast of Cameroon on Saturday morning, Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said. Kenya Airways said on Saturday Cameroonian authorities had picked up an automatic distress signal from the area where a jet to Nairobi went missing.
Alarmed by noise pollution, a Kenyan Rift Valley town has ordered all churches to install soundproof equipment or move out, officials said on Thursday. The Eldoret Municipal Council said residents had complained that the town’s dozens of churches were a public nuisance owing to constant noise — mainly preaching and songs — from sound-distorting woofers.
Gunmen have seized three fishing vessels off the Somali coast in the latest in a growing number of hijackings since Islamists were kicked out of Mogadishu at the beginning of the year, a maritime official said on Thursday. Andrew Mwangura, director of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme, said the boats were taken off Puntland.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki on Tuesday promised free education in public secondary schools starting next year, a move that would drastically reduce the cost of learning. Kibaki made the pledge to thousands of workers in the capital’s Uhuru (Independence) gardens in a year in which he is expected to seek re-election.
Luzau Basambombo spent six months in a Kinshasa prison, being abused over and over again. The Congolese human-rights activist suspects that he was put behind bars because he openly admitted being homosexual. Today, he lives in Nairobi and feels comfortable there. ”Things are changing here in Kenya — in favour of us,” he says.
Washington and London should appoint envoys to help ensure Uganda’s government and Lord’s Resistance Army rebels do not squander their best hope for peace in 20 years, an influential think-tank said on Friday. Talks resumed in south Sudan on Thursday, with United Nations envoy Joaquim Chissano warning that if squandered, the opportunity may never return.
The carnage and suffering in Somalia may be the worst in more than a decade — but you’d hardly know it from your nightly news. For a mix of reasons, from public fatigue at another African conflict to international diplomatic divisions and frustration, a war slaughtering civilians and creating a huge refugee crisis has failed to grab world attention or stir global players.
Highly endangered mountain gorillas in the East Africa region have shown a steady resurgence in the past decade due to conservation efforts, a wildlife group said on Friday. The WWF said there are currently 340 gorillas in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to nearly half of the world’s remaining mountain gorillas.
This year marks the birth of a new ”species”: Homo urbanus. For the first time in history there will be as many city dwellers as rural inhabitants in the world. The executive director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, Anna Tibaijuka, coined this term to describe the rise in city and, consequently, slum dwellers.
About 124 000 people have fled the volatile Somali capital, Mogadishu, in the past two months as violence escalated in the war-torn city, the United Nations refugee agency said on Sunday. About one-10th of them fled in the past week alone, with the majority deserting Mogadishu last month.
Pirates have released a United Nations-chartered cargo ship and an Indian vessel they captured in the unpatrolled waters off the coast of Somalia, a maritime official said on Saturday. Andrew Mwangura of the Seafarers’ Assistance Programme said the hijackers freed the MV Rozen and MV Nimatullah on Friday.
Somali pirates are demanding 000 for the return of an Indian-flagged merchant ship and its crew, officials said on Thursday. The pirates, armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, seized the MV Nimatullah and its 14-member crew off the coast of Mogadishu early on Monday.
A cargo ship escaped seizure at Somalia’s main port in the restive capital, Mogadishu, three days after pirates captured another vessel in the same harbour, a maritime official said on Wednesday. Gunmen in speed boats opened fire at the MV Nishan, a United Arab Emirates-registered vessel, late on Tuesday.
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.
Gaudencia, a Kenyan woman in her fifties, works barefoot preparing her fallow field for sowing corn. Until two years ago, she had no idea leaving the land untilled some seasons could reap a better harvest. ”It was not enough to feed the whole family before. But now it is,” she says, wiping beads of sweat off her forehead.
Refugees who have fled Mogadishu by the tens of thousands are suffering atrocious conditions, with some living under trees and paying extortionate prices for shelter or even shade, the United Nations said. Nearly 100 000 Somalis have left Mogadishu since February amid a growing insurgency.
Kenya invited expressions of interest on Wednesday from companies seeking to buy a 26% stake in Telkom Kenya, a state-owned landline company, as a strategic partner. The government said it also intended to sell off a further 34% of Telkom in an initial public offering once the strategic partner was on board.