Kenyan President William Ruto on Monday vowed to crack down on “unacceptable” religious movements after police discovered the bodies of 51 people suspected of belonging to a Christian cult that practised starvation.

A major search is underway in a forest near the coastal town of Malindi where dozens of corpses were exhumed over the weekend, with authorities fearing more grisly discoveries could be made.

A full-scale investigation has been launched into the Good News International Church and its leader, named in court documents as Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who preached that death by starvation delivered followers to God.

It is believed some of his devotees could still be hiding in the bush around Shakahola where the first bodies were discovered in shallow graves last week.

A 325-hectare (800-acre) area of woodland has been declared a crime scene as authorities seek to understand the true scale of what is being dubbed the “Shakahola Forest Massacre.”

Ruto, speaking in speaking in Kiambu county neighbouring Nairobi, said there was “no difference” between rogue pastors like Nthenge — who has been arrested and is awaiting trial — and terrorists.

State of survival: without water or food

“Terrorists use religion to advance their heinous acts. People like Mr Mackenzie are using religion to do exactly the same thing.”

“I have instructed the agencies responsible to take up the matter and to get to the root cause and to the bottom of the activities of… people who want to use religion to advance weird, unacceptable ideology.”

Police chief Japhet Koome was expected on Monday to visit the site, where teams clad in overalls have been scouring for more burial pits and possible cult survivors.

Fears for followers

There are fears some members could be hiding from authorities in the surrounding bushland and at risk of death if not quickly found.

A number of people have already been rescued and taken to hospital in Malindi, on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast.

Hussein Khalid, a member of the rights group Haki Africa that tipped off the police to the actions of the church, said one of those rescued had refused to eat despite being in clear physical distress.

“The moment she was brought here, she absolutely refused to be administered with first aid and she closed her mouth firmly, basically refusing to be assisted, wanting to continue with her fasting until she dies,” he told AFP.

The Kenya Red Cross said 112 people had been reported missing to its support staff at Malindi.

Nthenge turned himself in to police and was charged last month, according to local media, after two children starved to death in the custody of their parents.

He has since been released on bail of 100,000 Kenyan shillings ($700). The case is due to be heard again on May 2.

The case has grabbed the national attention, prompting the government to flag the need for tighter control of fringe denominations in a country with a history of self-declared pastors and movements that become immersed in crime.

Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki, who has announced he would visit the site on Tuesday, described the case as “the clearest abuse of the constitutionally enshrined human right to freedom of worship.”

But attempts to regulate religion in the majority-Christian country have been fiercely opposed in the past as attempts to undermine constitutional guarantees for a division between church and state.

Source: AFP

Sixty people were killed in Burkina Faso by attackers wearing military uniforms, a prosecutor said late Sunday, announcing an investigation into the latest attack in the insurgency-hit country.

“About 60 people were killed by people wearing the uniforms of our national armed forces” on Thursday in the village of Karma, in northern Yatenga province, Ouahigouya High Court prosecutor Lamine Kabore told AFP in a statement, citing the gendarmerie.

“The wounded have been evacuated and are currently being taken care of within our health facilities,” he said, adding that the perpetrators had “taken various goods”. According to residents contacted by AFP, survivors said more than 100 people on motorbikes and pick-up trucks raided Karma.

Dozens of men and young people were killed by the men, dressed in military uniforms, they said. Survivors gave a toll of “around 80 dead”. The West African country is battling a terrorist insurgency that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

The latest bloodshed occurred a week after 34 defence volunteers and six soldiers were killed in an attack by suspected terrorists near the village of Aorema, about 15 kilometres from Ouahigouya.

Following that attack, Burkina Faso’s military junta declared a “general mobilisation” to give the state “all necessary means” to combat a string of bloody attacks blamed on terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda and the Islamic State group.

The government had already announced a plan to recruit 5,000 more soldiers to battle the insurgency that has gripped one of the world’s poorest countries.

Captain Ibrahim Traoré, Burkina’s transitional president, has declared a goal of recapturing the 40 percent of the country’s territory which is controlled by terrorist groups.

The violence has left more than 10,000 people dead, according to nongovernmental aid groups, and displaced 2 million people from their homes.

Source: AFP

Sudan’s military ruled out negotiations with a rival paramilitary force on Thursday, saying it would only accept its surrender as the two sides continued to battle in central Khartoum and other parts of the country, threatening to wreck international attempts to broker a longer cease-fire.

A tenuous 24-hour cease-fire that began the previous day ran out Thursday evening with no word of extension. The military’s statement raised the likelihood of a renewed surge in the nearly week-long violence that has killed hundreds and pushed Sudan’s population to the breaking point. Alarm has grown that the country’s medical system was on the verge of collapse, with many hospitals forced to shut down and others running out of supplies.

The expiring truce had failed to put a stop to fighting throughout the day and brought only marginal calm to some parts of the capital Khartoum. But many residents took advantage to flee the homes where they have been trapped for days. “Massive numbers” of people, mostly women and children, were leaving in search of safer areas, said Atiya Abdulla Atiya, secretary of the Doctors’ Syndicate.

Thursday afternoon, the military said in a statement that it would not negotiate with its rival, the Rapid Support Forces, over an end to the crisis and would only discuss terms of its surrender. “There would be no armed forces outside (of) the military system,” it said.

The demise of the truce, the second attempt this week, underscored the failure of the United States, U.N., European Union and regional powers to push Sudan’s top generals to halt their campaigns to seize control of the country. Instead, army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo have each appeared determined to win outright military victory over the other.

In a sign they expect violence to escalate, the U.S. and other countries were making preparations to evacuate their citizens in Sudan — a difficult prospect since most major airports have become battlegrounds and movement out of Khartoum to safer areas is dangerous.

The U.S. military is moving assets to a base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti for a possible evacuation of American Embassy personnel, administration officials said. Japan plans to send military planes to Djibouti, and the Netherlands has dispatched its own to Jordan.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres appealed for the combatants to commit to a three-day cease-fire to coincide with the holiday of Eid al-Fitr, beginning Friday, marking the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. “We are living a very important moment in the Muslim calendar. I think this is the right moment for a cease-fire to hold,” he told reporters.

But so far direct communications to the rival generals by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Turkish president and others over the past days have been unable to secure even 24 hours of calm, much less a longer truce aimed at leading to negotiations to resolve the crisis. Each side’s main regional allies, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, have called in vain for talks.

At least 330 people have been killed and 3,300 wounded in the fighting since it began Saturday, the U.N.’s World Health Organization said, but the toll is likely higher because many bodies lie uncollected in the streets.

Through the day Thursday, gunfire could be heard constantly across Khartoum. Residents reported the heaviest fighting around the main military headquarters in central Khartoum. Military warplanes struck RSF positions at the airport and in the neighboring city of Omdurman, residents said. The military said its warplanes Thursday also struck a convoy of RSF vehicles heading to the capital, though the claim could not be independently confirmed.

Khartoum residents have been desperate for a respite after days of being trapped in their homes, their food and water running out. Aid groups have been unable to deliver help to Sudan’s overwhelmed hospitals, Atiya said. Hospitals in Khartoum are running dangerously low on medical supplies, often operating without power and clean water. Around 70% of hospitals near the clash sites throughout the country are out of service, the Sudanese Doctors Syndicate said Thursday. At least nine hospitals were bombed, it said.

“We are worried that Sudan’s healthcare system could completely collapse,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general, said.

Airstrikes on Thursday afternoon hit medical facilities in Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan province southwest of Khartoum, killing at least 26 civilians and 17 policemen, the Doctors’ Syndicate said. Clashes have intensified in the city, driving more than 3,300 people from their homes, many o them crowding in a school and a sports facility, it said.

The fighting has been disastrous for a country where the United Nations says around a third of the population — some 16 million people — are in need of humanitarian aid. The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF warned that critical care has been disrupted for 50,000 severely acutely malnourished children, who need round-the-clock treatment.

Save the Children said power outages across the country have destroyed cold chain storage facilities for lifesaving vaccines, as well as the national stock of insulin and several antibiotics. Millions of children, the aid group said, are now at risk of disease and further health complications. It said 12% of the country’s 22 million children are suffering from malnutrition and are vulnerable to other diseases.

The Egyptian and Sudanese militaries said that Egypt succeeded in repatriating dozens of its military personnel who had been detained by the RSF when it attacked Merowe airport, north of the capital, early in the fighting. Egypt said its personnel were there for training and joint exercises.

The conflict has once again derailed Sudan’s attempt to establish democratic rule since a popular uprising helped oust helped depose long-time autocrat Omar al-Bashir four years ago. Burhan and Dagalo jointly carried out a coup purging civilians from a transitional government in 2021.

The explosion of violence came after weeks of growing tensions between the two generals over new international attempts to press a return to civilian government.

Both sides have a long history of human rights abuses. The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias, which were accused of widespread atrocities when the government deployed them to put down a rebellion in Sudan’s western Darfur region in the early 2000s.

The conflict has raised fears of a spillover from the strategically located nation to its African neighbors.

Sudan’s fighting has also caused up to 20,000 Sudanese to seek refuge in eastern Chad, the U.N. said Thursday. At least 320 Sudanese soldiers fled to Chad, where they were disarmed, said Daoud Yaya Brahim, Chad’s defense minister. The troops were apparently fleeing from Darfur, where the RSF is the most powerful armed force.

“Chad is for the moment trying to remain neutral … (but) Chad will be forced to pick sides if Sudan continues its descent into civil war,” said Benjamin Hunger, Africa analyst for Verisk Maplecroft, a risk assessment firm.

Source: AP