KENYA

Eritrea on Wednesday rejected a United Nations Security Council call to immediately withdraw troops from a demilitarised buffer zone on its arch-foe Ethiopia, criticising the world body for ineffectiveness. Asmara claimed it had a sovereign right to have troops on any portion of its soil.

Ethiopian security forces massacred 193 people — triple the official death toll — during anti-government protests following last year’s election, a senior judge appointed to investigate the violence said on Wednesday. Unarmed protesters were shot, beaten and strangled to death, said Wolde-Michael Meshesha, vice-chairperson of the government-backed inquiry.

Presidential election campaigning began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Friday. Frontrunners Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba square off for the second time on October 29 after a run-off election was called following July’s vote. Then, incumbent President Joseph Kabila won 45% of the vote, just short of the 50% needed to be declared president.

More than 120-million Africans face starvation because much of the £3-billion (,6-billion) in aid spent each year to help them is wasted, an aid organisation said on Tuesday. International aid arrives too late, is targeted at the wrong things and is usually only a short term measure that doesn’t tackle the root cause of hunger said humanitarian aid organisation Care International UK.

A more than three-fold jump in the amount of cocaine seized in Africa has sparked fears the continent is rapidly becoming a trafficking hub, African law enforcement officers were told this week. Seizures of the drug across Africa surged from 1,1 tonnes in 2003 to 3,6 tonnes in 2004, according to the most recent United Nations statistics available, far outpacing the worldwide increase of 18% in the same period.

A rally car driver described on Wednesday how he saw the great-grandson of Kenya’s most famous white settler shoot dead a black Kenyan ”by mistake” in a trial that has awakened animosities from colonial times. Thomas Cholmondeley has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Robert Njoya, a local stonemason he accuses of poaching on his land.

The growing tide of Somalis fleeing conflict at home has raised the number of refugees in Kenya to the highest for a decade and is threatening to exhaust food aid stocks, the United Nations warned on Tuesday. About 24 000 people have entered the Dadaab camps in northern Kenya since the start of the year, the UN World Food Programme said.

An elderly nun who was gunned down at the hospital where she worked in Somalia’s capital was ”specifically targeted before being executed by gunmen lying in wait”, a hospital official said on Monday. Willy Huber, regional director of the Austrian-funded hospital where 65-year-old Sister Leonella had worked for four years, said the killing was not random.

Hundreds of patients are forcibly held in Burundi’s hospitals — sometimes for months — over unpaid bills and many have to sell prized land or cattle to leave, a human rights report said on Thursday. Health care for mothers and children under five is free in the tiny Central African country whose shattered economy is emerging from more than a decade of ethnic conflict.

A vicious cycle of drought and floods is continuing to bring death and misery to millions of impoverished people across East Africa, the United Nations said on Friday. After months of a scorching killer drought that threatened more than 11-million mainly rural peasants and pastoralists with starvation, heavy rains have pounded the region, causing deadly flash floods in six countries, it said.

Kenyan wildlife rangers in choppers killed a pair of rogue elephants this week after a series of fatal attacks on people in incidents highlighting growing human-animal conflict, officials said on Thursday. The rampaging bulls, blamed by locals for leading larger groups of jumbos onto farms to raid crops, were shot dead on Sunday and Wednesday.

Somalia’s weak, United Nations-backed transitional government will meet its Islamic rivals this week in Sudan in an effort to ease tensions after the Islamists took over of much of the country’s south, an Arab League official said. The talks will open with a ceremony on Friday.

Eritrean police have arrested several United Nations peacekeepers who allegedly were trying to smuggle people out of Eritrea, the information ministry said. An unspecified number of staff from the UN’s Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea were seized as they tried to cross into arch-rival Ethiopia, said Tuesday’s statement on the Eritrean information ministry website.

The leaders of Kenya and Ethiopia met on Tuesday to ease mounting tensions along their border where at least 100 people have been killed in tribal attacks over the past three months. In addition, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and visiting Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles al-Zenawi were discussing prospects for restoring stability in their neighbour Somalia, officials said.

United States Senator Barack Obama called on Monday for stepped up protection of press freedom and the environment, meeting with embattled Kenyan journalists and Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai. Speaking at Nairobi’s Standard Media Group, Obama offered a pep talk to employees concerned by growing assaults on press freedom.

At least 18 people were killed in northern Kenya during cross-border cattle raids by about 300 armed bandits from Ethiopia, officials said on Monday. Most of the dead were raiders who tried to steal thousands of animals from several villages close to the Ethiopian border, 650km from the capital, Nairobi, they added.

East African defence chiefs expect to have the vanguard of a peacekeeping force for Somalia ready by the end of next month, officials said on Friday, despite fierce objections from powerful Islamists in the chaotic Horn of Africa nation. The first elements of the nearly 7 000-strong regional force are to assemble in late September, the officials said.

A severe humanitarian crisis may erupt this year in Somalia, where insecurity could compound crop failures and leave about 3,6-million people in need of urgent aid, a United Nations agency said on Wednesday. Still battling to recover from the effects of a killer drought that hit East Africa, about 1,8-million Somalis remain dependent on assistance.

World Cup semifinalists Kenya were no match for Bangladesh as the tourists clinched the third and final one-day match by six wickets on Tuesday to win the series 3-0. Medium-pacer Ashrafe Mortaza acted as the chief destroyer of the Kenyan batting line-up, taking 6-26 for a total haul of 13 wickets in the three-match series.

The situation in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains as unstable as ever as vote counting continues following landmark elections two weeks ago, with incumbent president Joseph Kabila leading with 53% of the votes counted by Tuesday.

All-rounder Mashrafee Mortaza was the star for Bangladesh as they beat Kenya by two wickets on Sunday to win the one-day series 2-0. Having taken 3-53 in the Kenyan innings, the stylish left-hander returned to hit the winning runs that helped Bangladesh hold off a resurgent Kenyan side buoyed by a tight pace-bowling attack.