Police tortured, raped and arbitrarily detained about 1,000 refugees in the pretext of fighting terrorism, according to a Human Rights Watch report. The Human Rights Watch said police from four units unleashed a wave of abuses against Somali and Ethiopian refugees and asylum seekers and Somali Kenyans in Nairobi’s Eastleigh suburb between mid-November 2012 and [...]
One year after last ship was hijacked, Somali PM says his country’s land strategy was key to solving piracy problem. For years, Somali pirates used to hold shipping to ransom. Companies were forced to run convoys through the Gulf of Aden, and into the Indian ocean. But it has now been one year since they [...]
As many as 3,000 African Unionpeacekeepers have been killed inSomalia in recent years trying to bring stability, the United Nations deputy secretary general, Jan Eliasson, said Thursday. The 17,700-strong African Union force began deploying to Somalia in 2007 and has helped push out the Shabab, an Islamist militant group, from the capital and other urban centers, though the group can [...]
NAIROBI, Kenya — A most-wanted American jihadi in Somalia said Friday that the leader of Islamic extremist rebels in Somali was starting a civil war, just hours after an assassination attempt left the Alabama native with a neck wound. Omar Hammami posted on Twitter about what he labeled an assassination attempt late Thursday as he [...]
After months of tough fighting, Somali government forces and their African Union allies this week defeated fighters of the al-Shabaab militant Islamic group and opened up the key 240-kilometre road between the capital, Mogadishu, and the strategic central city of Baidoa. The victory for the government forces and the 17,000 soldiers of the African Union [...]
(Nairobi, March 27, 2013) – Members of state security forces and armed groups have raped, beaten, and otherwise abused displaced Somalis who have arrived in Somalia’s capital fleeing famine and armed conflict since 2011, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The new Somali government should urgently improve the protection and security of Mogadishu’s [...]
The Kenyan presidential candidate who faces charges at the International Criminal Court took an early lead Tuesday as votes were counted the day after the country’s presidential election. With about a third of ballots counted, early results showed Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta ahead with 54 percent of the vote to Prime Minister Raila Odinga [...]
(Reuters) – Somali militants linked to al Qaeda urged Muslims to boycott Kenya’s presidential election on Monday and wage jihad against the Kenyan military which sent troops into neighboring Somalia in late 2011 to help crush the rebels. The Islamist al Shabaab rebel group told Kenyan Muslims, who account for about 11 percent of the [...]
MOMBASA, Kenya — The ties that bind Kenyans to their state are frequently stretched but in few places are they so close to breaking point as the coast. Long-standing grievances over land ownership, state neglect and economic marginalization have given rise to voter apathy and secessionist tendencies that critics say shed light on the Kenyan government’s failure [...]
Yusuf Bilow Isaq, a 41-year-old toothbrush salesman at the K5 intersection in Mogadishu, said he cannot afford to spend money on education when his family is struggling. “My eldest child has not been to school in his 15 years and his younger siblings are even worse off because there are no free schools,” he told [...]