Doctors Without Borders workers abducted in Darfur

By Sarah El Deeb – Associated Press

AP – A worker walks into the offices of the Belgian branch of the aid group ‘Doctors Without Borders’ known …

KHARTOUM, Sudan – Armed men abducted three international aid workers and two Sudanese guards in Darfur, a week after the government in Khartoum ordered aid groups expelled in response to an international arrest warrant for the Sudanese president, officials said Thursday.

The kidnappings — believed to be the first of Westerners in Darfur — took place late Wednesday in a rural area known as Saraf Umra about 125 miles west of the city of El Fasher, said Noureddine Mezni, a spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers in Khartoum.

The area is government controlled, and pro-government Arab militias known as janjaweed live and are based nearby.

The attackers stormed into the compound of the Belgian branch of the aid group Doctors Without Borders in the evening and abducted the staffers, said Susan Sandars, a Nairobi, Kenya-based spokeswoman for the group, which is also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF.

The two Sudanese guards were later released, but a Canadian nurse, an Italian doctor and a French coordinator were still being held, she said, adding there was no information on the motive or the whereabouts of the kidnapped. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the abduction.

The kidnappings come after Sudan expelled the 13 biggest aid groups from Darfur in response to the March 4 arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir by the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 6-year-old war in the region.

Many fear the warrant would make the foreign community in Sudan a target for anger and revenge attacks.

The French and Dutch branches of MSF were among the 13 groups expelled from Darfur. Its Belgian, Swiss and Spanish branches, however, were allowed to remain, along with dozens of other smaller aid organization. MSF, which has five branches, had an extensive medical operation in Darfur and was often the only health provider in violence-stricken or rebel held areas.

Later Thursday, Christopher Stokes, director of MSF Belgium, said in Brussels that MSF decided to pull all its remaining staff from Darfur to Khartoum as a safety precaution until those abducted are freed.

“We are trying to negotiate for the moment the release of our colleagues,” Stokes said. “The only people that will stay behind are the people dealing with trying to secure the freedom of our colleagues. The remaining … MSF Belgium, Switzerland and Spain … also decided to withdraw their teams.”

The 13 expelled aid groups have all pulled out of the large western region of Sudan, although some stayed on in Khartoum. They represented about 40 percent of the humanitarian personnel in Darfur.

Authorities claimed the groups were cooperating with the ICC tribunal. Sudanese officials have warned that vigilantes could target foreigners, though they promised to try to protect them.

Hassabo Abdel-Rahman, of the government humanitarian affairs office said the three abducted workers were able to call their MSF colleagues after the kidnapping to assure they were in good health.

He said the two Sudanese guards who were released have been questioned by police but could not identify their kidnappers. “It’s an isolated and immoral act,” Abdel-Rahman said, claiming an unknown group was behind the abduction.

The ICC warrant accuses al-Bashir of orchestrating atrocities against civilians in Darfur, where his Arab-led government has been battling ethnic African rebels since 2003. Up to 300,000 people have been killed, and 2.7 million have been driven from their homes.

Most of those who have fled the fighting rely on U.N. agencies and international aid groups for their survival and the expulsion of the aid groups also raises fears of a humanitarian disaster.

MSF Belgium said on its Web site that the families of the kidnapped have been informed. “Doctors Without Borders is seriously concerned over their safety and is doing all that is possible to secure their safe release,” it said.

Sergio Cecchini of MSF in Rome said the group was not aware of any ransom requests and said he had no information of who was behind the kidnapping.

Aid workers or convoys are frequently attacked in Darfur by armed bandits from any of the multiple armed forces fighting in Darfur. Usually, aid workers are let go after their equipment is stolen, but some have been killed.

In February, two Sudanese working for the French Aide Medicale Internationale were killed by bandits. In 2006, a Sudanese working for Oxfam was kidnapped in the same area where the Wednesday kidnapping took place, and remained missing for at least 2 months, forcing Oxfam to shut down its offices there. The Sudanese was killed shortly after his release, when he got caught up in fighting while trying to get back to Saraf Umra.

The increased banditry has forced many aid workers to travel only by helicopters to avoid high-risk roads.

Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman Ali Youssef said Sudan condemned the abductions.

“We are following this, we don’t have clues,” he said, dismissing the possibility that the aid workers were detained by authorities. “Why should we detain them? If the government of Sudan was responsible … we would say so, say that they are under investigation.”

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini requested the cooperation of Sudanese authorities and stressed in a statement that hostage safety must be the absolute priority and that “therefore no action must be put in place that might compromise that.”

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Associated Press Writer Constant Brand in Brussels contributed to this report.

Gunmen assassinate prominent Somali journalist

From Mohammed Amiin Adow

A prominent Somali journalist was shot and killed by suspected Islamist gunmen in broad daylight on Wednesday, as one of his colleagues watched in horror. Journalist Said Tahlil Ahmed was killed by gunmen in Somalia, according to a colleague who was with him. Journalist Said Tahlil Ahmed was killed by gunmen in Somalia, according to a colleague who was with him.

The journalist who witnessed the assassination of Said Tahlil Ahmed in Mogadishu said the two gunmen also intended to kill others. “First, they shot him in the back and then one of the armed men came over him and fired more shots into his head to finish him off,” he said. “One of the gunmen was shouting, ‘Kill the other one,’ which they meant another one of us.” The journalist did not want his name released for security reasons. Tahlil, the director of independent HornAfrik Radio and host of a popular radio talk show, was on his way to a meeting that had been called by the Islamist militia Al-Shabaab, when gunmen from the group attacked him, his colleague said.

The National Union of Somali Journalists issued a statement strongly condemning Tahlil’s assassination, which it blamed on Al-Shabaab — a radical Islamist militia that controls parts of Mogadishu and four regions in southern Somalia. “This is an outrageous and appalling assassination,” said NUSOJ Secretary-General Omar Faruk Osman, in a prepared statement. “Said Tahlil Ahmed was assassinated because of his strong and professional commitment for independent journalism.” The surviving journalist — who suffered injuries to his legs after he fell down while fleeing the attack — said Al-Shabaab had called for a meeting with Mogadishu radio station directors, but the group would not say what the meeting was about, according to the witness and NUSOJ.

“This is absolutely shocking and the journalists in Mogadishu are in a state of fear,” the journalist said. “We are extremely worried about our safety.” Local radio and television stations in the Somali capital had been broadcasting live coverage of last week’s Somali presidential election held in Djibouti, which many Islamist groups — including Al-Shabaab — have rejected. Al-Shabaab has imposed harsh Islamic law, or sharia, in the areas of Somalia that it controls. It seized the city of Baidoa, where the transitional government is based, preventing the newly elected government from returning to Somalia. Last year, the United States put Al-Shabaab on its list of terrorist organizations because of its ties to al Qaeda.

Tahlil is the second journalist to be murdered in Somalia this year. Militias shot and killed Hassan Mayow Hassan, a reporter for Shabelle Radio, on January 1 in the agricultural town of Afgoye. The Committee to Protect Journalists lists Somalia as the seventh most deadly nation in the world for journalists. Members of the news media work under duress there amid a war between a weak transitional government and insurgents, the committee said, and 10 Somali journalists have been killed in the last two years. Tahlil’s predecessor, HornAfrik chairman Ali Iman Sharke, was killed by a roadside bomb in Mogadishu in 2007, after he had returned from the funeral of another radio director who was killed on the same day by unknown gunmen in Mogadishu. Shabelle radio’s acting director, Bashir Nor Gedi, was also killed in 2007 near his home in Mogadishu by unknown gunmen.

Zimbabwe opposition: Mayor’s wife killed

HARARE, Zimbabwe (CNN) — Zimbabwe’s opposition party said four of its activists and the wife of Harare’s mayor — an opposition member — were found dead Thursday, just days ahead of next week’s presidential runoff election.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been detained four times while campaigning. Tendai Biti, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change’s (MDC) secretary-general, was also formally charged with treason Thursday after being arrested last week.

A spokesman for the MDC blamed President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party for the deaths, saying they brought to 70 the number of MDC party members killed since a bitterly contested election three months ago.

The body of the mayor’s wife, 27-year-old Abigail Chiroto, was found in a mortuary close to the couple’s house north of Harare. She had been beaten so severely with rocks and iron bars that her face was almost unrecognizable, said MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa.

“It’s way out of the ordinary. It’s callous,” he said.

Chiroto was kidnapped, along with her four-year-old son, on Tuesday. Some of her kidnappers wore military uniforms, Chamisa said. Chiroto’s son was released unharmed.

Her husband, Emmanuel Chiroto, is an MDC member who was recently elected mayor of Harare. He was not home at the time of the kidnapping.

The other activists were also abducted Tuesday. They were were found in a township, about 30 km (18 miles) south of Harare. They had been stabbed with spears and shot, Chamisa said.

“It’s unbelievable the way people are being killed or murdered,” he said. “It’s almost mass butchering.”

Police confirmed the deaths of the activists but did not link the victims to any political party.

Mugabe’s party denied any part in the deaths, saying MDC officials made such accusations frequently.

“They are claiming anyone who dies. They phone CNN,” Bright Matonga, a ZANU-PF spokesman, said. “Whenever someone dies in the hospital, they rush to claim them.”

Matonga said Harare was run by a commission. “There is no MDC mayor in Zimbabwe,” he said. “There is no newly elected mayor in Harare.”

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at the United Nations on Thursday, accused Mugabe of sponsoring efforts to starve, beat and kill supporters of his opponent so he can win the upcoming election.

“Mugabe is increasing violence against (the) opposition. … President Mugabe has squandered the promise of the very nation that was hailed as the jewel of Africa,” Rice said at a roundtable discussion attended by representatives from many international governments.

“Clearly we have reached a point where broader, stronger, international effort is needed,” she added.

Meanwhile, Biti was also charged with communicating false information prejudicial to the state, bringing the office of the president into disrepute and causing disaffection among armed forces, according to a journalist who was in the Harare courtroom.

He had originally been scheduled to be formally charged Monday.

Biti’s arrest and treason charges have been criticized by African and international leaders who characterize it as a ploy by Mugabe supporters to intimidate the opposition party before his June 27 runoff election against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

In recent weeks, opposition groups and churches have reported numerous cases of kidnappings, torture and other violence in the country targeting opponents of Mugabe. ZANU-PF members have been suspected of being behind the acts.

ZANU-PF claims that the MDC is behind the violence. It said MDC members attacked the mayor of Kadoma, a city 140 km (87 miles) southwest of Harare. It also accused MDC activists of causing millions of dollars damage to private business.

Last week, Mugabe warned that veterans he commanded in his country’s liberation war nearly three decades ago would take up arms again if Tsvangirai won.

Mugabe has been Zimbabwe’s only leader since the war ended in 1980, but is blamed for the economic collapse of a country once considered a regional breadbasket.

Zimbabweans increasingly are unable to afford food and other essentials with agriculture paralyzed by land reform and the world’s highest rate of inflation.

Police have arrested Tsvangirai several times in the weeks leading up to the runoff, most recently on Saturday with 11 other officials and supporters from his party. Mugabe has threatened to arrest more MDC officials, blaming the party for pre-election violence.

Kenya military operation targets gang

By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer 18 minutes ago

The military sealed off a region of western Kenya where land disputes have flared into violence, and witnesses said helicopter gunships were strafing the area Thursday to try to drive gunmen from forests and caves.

“Always in this country, people are fighting over land,” said Lucy Okello, head nurse at Kitale District Hospital, where four girls were being treated for severe burns after their village was attacked, allegedly by the Sabaot Land Defense Force, a militia fighting for the redistribution of land.

The oldest girl, 15-year-old Joanne Temuko, wailed and held her head in her hands as nurses applied balm to her scorched back.

Thirteen other civilians were hacked, shot or burned to death in the attack last week. There was no claim of responsibility. A militia member said at the time that his group was simply trying to “correct historical injustices.”

The military operation at Mount Elgon comes despite a power-sharing agreement designed to end a wave of violence that erupted after a disputed election last December. The violence awakened decades-old tensions over land and inequality.

Police manning checkpoints Thursday along dusty roads lined with banana trees and onion farms leading to Mount Elgon ordered journalists and aid workers to turn back.

There was no word on casualties in the military operation, which began Monday around Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano near the border with Uganda, where spectacular caves, waterfalls and hot springs draw hikers and other adventure tourists.

“This is a serious government operation,” said an officer at a checkpoint in Namangofulo, the last village before the foothills of Mount Elgon, about 300 miles northwest of Nairobi. “You only go through if you have a uniform.”

In Nairobi, government spokesman Alfred Mutua said journalists were being kept out of the area for their own safety.

Gunmen “have been killing people indiscriminately. We don’t want them to start killing journalists and for (journalists) to be caught in the line of fire. So it is basically keeping away journalists for their own security,” he said.

The Dec. 27 vote tapped into a well of resentment that resurfaces regularly at election time in Kenya, but this year’s bloodshed has been the most brutal and sustained by far.

The election, which international and local observers say was rigged, unleashed weeks of bloodshed that has killed more than 1,000 people and exposed simmering resentments over land and President Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu ethnic group, long dominant in politics and the economy.

Mutua said the aim of the military operation at Mount Elgon was to flush out and arrest suspects in killings and other crimes. He said some suspects had tried to flee across the border into Uganda.

Abdul Mwasera, the provincial commissioner in the region, said 187 people had been arrested.

“The operation will continue until these criminals surrender or are wiped out to allow peace to prevail,” Mwasera said.

Several villagers outside the area sealed off by the military said they have seen helicopter gunships firing for several days now, most recently before dawn Thursday.

“I was seeing fire,” said Jeff Ngeti, 18. “Men were running.”

Jacqueline Kamello, 27, who was working on an onion farm, said there were at least three helicopters flying in the area Thursday morning.

“I am happy about this military operation,” she said. “These land militias have been bothering us, carting away our animals, attacking our neighbors.”

The region sees frequent clashes over land, with some 800 people killed since 2006, said Ken Wafula, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in the Rift Valley.

Much of the tension can be traced back decades. Western Kenya was flooded by Kikuyu settlers when white farmlands were returned to Kenyans after independence in 1963.

The Kikuyu quickly prospered, growing into the most powerful of Kenya’s 42 ethnic groups, controlling land and running businesses and politics.

Kibaki and his rival, Raila Odinga, have now agreed to share power. Late Thursday, Kibaki named a six-member panel to investigate the election. Such a probe had been agreed to under the same deal that led to the power-sharing accord.

A former South African constitutional court judge, Johann Kriegler, will chair the panel, said a statement from Kibaki’s office. Kriegler chaired South Africa’s electoral commission in 1993 ahead of elections that saw Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela become the country’s first black president.

Despite the political accords, western Kenya has not seen an end to violence, much of it unleashed by land disputes.

The Sabaot Land Defense Force, members of the Sabaot ethnic group, are unhappy with recent attempts to settle land grievances and have turned on groups they believe were unfairly ceded land.

The violence has been worsened by guns smuggled into Kenya through its porous borders. The Sabaot militiamen and other raiders increasingly have been spotted with assault rifles.

Okello, the head nurse at Kitale District Hospital, said more patients are coming in with gunshot wounds, as well as injuries from weapons such as bows and arrows.

“We started receiving so many more people this year, with these wounds,” she said. “I have cried for these victims so much, I can cry no more.”

Chad: The Dead Heart of Africa Rebels

Chad’s president Idriss Deby Itno’s regime seems to have been scarred by the rebels this past week. Today he issued a statement asking the EU to deploy peacekeeping forces to help ease pressure from his men. In the aftermath of this attempted coup, Mr.Deby and the French were quick to ensure that the governance of Chad still remained within his grasp.

Chad, part of France’s African holdings until 1960, endured three decades of civil warfare as well as invasions by Libya before a semblance of peace was finally restored in 1990. The government eventually drafted a democratic constitution, and held flawed presidential elections in 1996 and 2001. In 1998, a rebellion broke out in northern Chad, which sporadically flares up despite several peace agreements between the government and the rebels. In 2005, new rebel groups emerged in western Sudan and have made probing attacks into eastern Chad, despite signing peace agreements in December 2006 and October 2007. Power remains in the hands of an ethnic minority. In June 2005, President Idriss DEBY held a referendum successfully removing constitutional term limits and won another controversial election in 2006. -CIA Fact Book

France was quick to take a stand against the rebels of its once colonized country and vowed to take measures ensuring Mr.Deby’s presidency.

“France will do what it has done before within the limits of international law and the rules that the president of the republic (Nicolas Sarkozy) has given the military for this operation,” Herve Morin, France’s defense minister, said during his arrival in Ndjamena.

However, this is not the first time rebels have tried to overthrow Mr.Deby from his palace. After all in 1990 it was he who overthrew the once French supported Hissène Habré from presidency. Let us not assume that Mr.Deby had Chad’s best interests at heart, especially after he modified the constitution in 2005 to remove the two-term limit of his presidency, and with Chad’s economy increasingly declining it is very likely that it will mirror the images of it’s neighboring countries and enemies Libya and Sudan.

On April 13, 2006 there was a coup attempt against Mr.Deby, in which he accused Sudan of supporting the insurgency. Chad however continues to back two armed groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), that are fighting the Sudan government forces and its proxies in Darfur. As for Libya’s part Colonel Gadaffi in 2006 brokered talks between the regimes, and made commitments not to back rebel groups against each other. These pledges were broken, and after the coup attempt President Déby broke off all diplomatic relations with Khartoum.