Thousands of villagers in northern Kenya fled their homes in fear on Thursday as new interclan violence wracked parts of the remote region after a brutal massacre and a reprisal attack killed at least 76 people this week, officials and residents of the area said.
New interclan violence wracked parts of remote northern Kenya overnight after a brutal village massacre and reprisal attack killed at least 76 people this week, officials and residents of the region said on Thursday. Members of the rival Borana and Gabra clans continued to clash following Tuesday’s attack, they said.
Kenya’s largest supermarket chain said on Wednesday it has begun using new biodegradable bags in response to growing environmental concerns about pollution by discarded flimsy plastic shopping containers. The chain uses more than 30-million bags every year at a cost of more than R3,4-billion.
Sixty-six people, at least 22 of them children, were killed in a brutal raid on a remote village in northeastern Kenya in what is believed to be the country’s worst single episode of inter-clan violence to date. ”The situation is very sad on the ground, everybody is mourning the dead,” said Bonaya Godana, a former Kenyan foreign minister.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) demanded on Tuesday that the pirates who commandeered a commercial vessel chartered to transport food aid to 28 000 tsunami survivors in Somalia release the ship, its cargo and crew within 48 hours. The <i>MV Semlow</i> was hijacked on June 27.
At least 21 people, many of them children, were killed on Tuesday when armed raiders attacked a rival clan’s village in a long-running dispute over water and pasture in eastern Kenya, residents said. Members of the Borana clan invaded the remote village of Turbi, about 580km north-east of Nairobi, early on Tuesday.
Thousands of Kenyan families have been left homeless following a government decision to evict them, without compensation, from farms allegedly carved out of the Mau forest in Narok district, south-western Kenya. According to the Kenya Red Cross Society, between 20 000 and 30 000 people lost their homes.
Alarmed by the increasingly bitter dispute over the relocation of the Somali transitional government, United Nations chief Kofi Annan is urging a ”serious dialogue” between rival factions to resolve the row that threatens peace hopes for the lawless nation.
Twelve French troops were convicted in a Paris military court of stealing cash last year from an Côte d’Ivoire bank they supposedly were protecting, the Ivorian daily Fraternite reported on Wednesday. The troops stole about 000 dollars from the bank in the rebel- held town of Man in the country’s northwest.
Kenya is evicting thousands of families who illegally occupy a vast swathe of forest in the country’s Rift Valley region, government spokesperson Alfred Mutua said on Friday. ”These forest areas are water catchment areas and the waters from these areas not only feed our country but [also] … trickle through the Maasai Mara to our neighbours”.
Kenyan police on Thursday re-arrested a Muslim man suspected of terrorism links just hours after he was acquitted on murder charges in connection with the 2002 al-Qaeda-linked bombing of an Israeli hotel near the southern port city of Mombasa, his lawyer said. He was arrested as he was about to leave prison.
At least 30 people have died since interclan fighting broke out on Monday in the town of Beletweyne, south-central Somalia. More than 70 people have been wounded and hundreds more displaced in the violence, now in its fourth day, local sources said on Thursday.
Hotels in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, have given members of Somalia’s transitional government up to Wednesday to vacate the rooms they have occupied for almost three years, a Somalian MP said on Wednesday. Another member of the Nairobi-based transitional federal Parliament said the notice was not a surprise.
The United Nations is looking into how best to resolve the problem of internally displaced persons worldwide, a senior UN official has said, describing internal displacement as a neglected humanitarian issue. More attention will be paid to eight countries with acute IDP problems, which include Nepal, Somalia and Sudan.
Ethiopian and Sudanese tribal fighters attacked and killed nine people in separate cattle raids in Kenya, officials said on Tuesday. Toposa fighters from southern Sudan gunned down five members of one family, including two schoolchildren, during a raid on Monday in the Turkana district of north-western Kenya.
Somalia’s government will not abandon plans to return from exile and establish itself in the country, a presidential spokesperson said on Tuesday, a day after militias loyal to rival Somali lawmakers fought for control of the town of Baidoa.
The Kenyan government is drafting a Bill that will outlaw smoking or holding lit tobacco products in public places, the country’s top physician said on Monday, a day ahead of World No Tobacco day. Among the provisions of the law are an increase tax on tobacco by 15% and penalties for those found smoking in public.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has fired a senior prosecutor involved in dropping murder charges against a prominent British aristocrat accused of killing a Maasai game warden, officials said on Thursday. He ”had to go because he acted unprofessionally when handling the case”, a senior government official said.
World media chiefs meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, demanded action on Tuesday from the Gambian government on the as-yet unsolved December murder of a journalist, and pilloried the country for repressing the independent press. Deyda Hydara, the co-founder and editor of the independent newspaper The Point, was killed last year.
World press chiefs are gathering in Nairobi, Kenya, for a conference next week amid growing criticism of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s government for alleged deterioriation in media freedom. The Vienna-based International Press Institute kicks off its annual three-day general assembly in Nairobi on Sunday.
A United States-funded famine-monitoring group on Thursday warned of continued food shortage in Somalia unless it rains in the country’s breadbasket southern region. Famine Early Warning System Network said about a million people are in need of humanitarian support in the Horn of Africa country.
Kenyan Immigration Minister Linah Chebii Kilimo personally led police to the rescue of five Indian women immigrants who were being forced to sing in a plush nightclub and locked up during the day, officials said on Thursday. Kilimo stormed into the nightclub in upmarket Parklands estate late on Tuesday.
The Merowe/Hamadab dam being built on the Nile River in northern Sudan could cause serious environmental problems, two environmental advocacy groups have warned. The dam is currently the largest hydropower project being developed in Africa and is expected to be completed between 2007 and 2009.
A magistrate dropped assault charges against Kenyan First Lady Lucy Kibaki after the attorney general said neither police nor prosecutors have had time to investigate whether she had slapped a television news cameraman on World Press Freedom Day. ”I’m so disappointed,” the cameraman said after hearing the ruling.
A recent statement by Kenyan Minister of Justice Kiraitu Murungi that it is ”no longer necessary” for the country to establish a commission to investigate atrocities committed under previous governments has been greeted with both outrage and delight. The promise to set up such a body, was one of the key pledges made during the current head of state’s campaign for office.
Kenya on Tuesday dropped murder charges against a prominent white rancher over the killing of a game warden for lack of sufficient evidence, the country’s top prosecutor said, as officials blamed police for rushing a flimsy case to court. The high-profile charge has rekindled deep colonial-era resentment.
Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi has sacked his information minister, seen as too close to powerful Somali warlords, amid a deepening split in the fledging transitional government still exiled in Kenya, officials said on Tuesday. Gedi fired Mohamoud Abdullahi Jama over the weekend.
As Ethiopia prepares for weekend elections, its human rights record has come under increasing criticism from watchdogs who believe the poll has already been marred by myriad abuses. Human Rights Watch accused Addis Ababa of taking advantage of a fight against the outlawed Oromo Liberation Front to justify the torture, imprisonment and sustained harassment of its critics.
At least 75 people have been reported killed and thousands more displaced in southern Sudan’s Lakes State since interclan violence, sparked by cattle rustling and disputes over pasture and water, erupted on April 24, aid workers said on Wednesday.
A Kenyan judge on Friday ordered a prominent white rancher to await trial on a capital murder charge in a maximum-security prison, rejecting a defence request for the British aristocrat to be held in less austere confines. The rancher is accused of murdering an undercover Kenya Wildlife Service officer at his vast ranch on April 19.
Calls for debt relief to be awarded to African countries have become de rigueur in non-governmental circles and a good many news publications. But does the matter crop up during dinner conversations across the continent? Is it sufficiently important to crowd out sports talk among people riding minibus taxis on their way to work?
Few would dispute that community radio stations play a valuable role in informing people about events in their neighbourhood — and give a voice to those who might be denied a platform by larger media organisations. It’s a shame, then, that governments often hamper the development of community radio.