UN report links Kenyan military to attacks on Somalia's largest Telecommunications provider

By TOM ODULA
Associated Press

   NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - A new United Nations report says it has corroborated evidence of five attacks allegedly carried out by Kenya's military on communication masts belonging to neighboring Somalia's largest telecom provider. One attack killed two civilians in 2018.

   The report by the U.N. panel of experts monitoring sanctions against Somalia says destroying telecommunication masts may prevent al-Shabab extremists from triggering explosives using mobile telephone signals.

   The report, made public this week, says Kenya's military denied involvement in the attacks. The military did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

   Hormuud Telecom Somalia says the attacks violate international law. The company asserts that its communications masts have been attacked 10 times by Kenya's military over the past two years.

   The attacks have caused at least $5 million in infrastructure while destabilizing communities, undermining Somalia's economic development and impeding the coordination of humanitarian efforts, a company spokesman said.

   Many people in the Horn of Africa nation long wracked by extremist attacks and climate shocks such as drought rely on remittances wired from family members in the Somali diaspora.

   The destruction of telecom infrastructure may be aimed at curtailing the transmission of intelligence on troop movements or extremist operations, Hormuud said.

   Kenya sent troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight al-Shabab, which also carries out attacks inside Kenya. As assault on a luxury hotel complex in the capital, Nairobi, in January killed 21 people.

   The new U.N. report also said the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab remain "a potent threat" to regional peace and are now manufacturing home-made explosives, expanding their revenue sources and infiltrating government institutions.

Rest in Peace Hodan Nalayeh

Thanks for your contributions to the Somali Diaspora as well as African Diaspora overall!  Your beautiful  blogs and short films about life in Kismayo  were/are enlightening!  Rest in peace, you are gone too soon.

The late Hodan Nalayeh

By NATALIE SCHACHAR and TRACEY LINDEMAN
Associated Press

   OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) - As bombings and attacks rocked the African nation of Somalia in recent years, Canadian-Somalian journalist Hodan Nalayeh found what she believed was a higher calling: Showcasing the hidden beauty of her homeland and its people.

   On Twitter, she shared posts featuring marine life dangling from the hands of fishermen, a small boat setting out in cerulean waters, and locals holding leopard-spotted stingrays.

   "Dried fish is big business on the island of (hash)Ilisi. They call this fish `Shabeelka Bada,' or `tiger of the ocean,"' Nalayeh wrote Thursday.

   "People save all their lives to have a retirement by the beach, yet we have plenty of it and cannot see its value. Let's appreciate the beautiful blessings we have," she wrote in an earlier posting.

   On Friday, the journalist dedicated to telling positive stories from a country suffering through decades of civil war, extremist attacks and famine was killed along with her husband, Farid Jama Suleiman, entrepreneur Mahad Nur and at least 23 others after a bomb exploded outside the Asasey Hotel in the Somalian city of Kismayo and gunmen stormed inside. Fifty-six other people were wounded in the attack, according to the Jubbaland regional president.

   Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, claimed responsibility for the 14-hour assault that ended as troops killed the gunmen.

   On Saturday, friends and family reeled as they heard that Nalayeh, 43, a journalist and mother expecting her third child, was among the dead.

   Maaz Khan, a 24-year-old filmmaker in Toronto, said Nalayeh had shared her hard-earned wisdom when he met her a few years ago.

   "She was always very inspiring," he told The Associated Press. "She would say, `It's tough in the beginning, but always push through and don't give up on your passion."'

   Ahmed Hussen, Canada's Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, mourned the journalist's death, saying on Twitter that she "highlighted the community's positive stories and contributions in Canada" through her work.

   "We mourn her loss deeply, and all others killed in the (hash)KismayoAttack," he said.

   Nalayeh was born in the northern Somalian city of Las Anod but moved with her parents and 11 siblings to the Canadian province of Alberta in the winter of 1984, when temperatures dropped to -40 degrees Celsius. Her father, a former Somalian diplomat, took a job as a parking attendant, she told Toronto.com in a 2014 interview.

   The family relocated to Toronto in 1992, and Nalayeh later completed a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from the University of Windsor and worked in sales and business, she said.

   In the podcast "Meaningful Work, Meaningful Life," Nalayeh told host Francine Beleyi that she made a mid-career pivot, going back to school to earn a postgraduate certificate in broadcast journalism and fulfill her childhood dream of being a journalist and television host. She became the world's first woman Somali media owner, according to statements she made to Canada's Status of Women committee in 2014.

   "I went back to work three months after giving birth. I said "This is not for me anymore," she told Beleyi.

   In 2014, she launched the Integration TV platform as a way to tell Somali stories, moving to the coastal city of Kismayo in 2018 to continue her work after visiting Somalia several times.

   The platform, widely known among members of the Somali diaspora, had gained hundreds of thousands of social media followers in the last five years. It also led Nalayeh to meet Suleiman, who was recently helping to build a drinking well in the drought-stricken African country. The couple was married last November in Kenya, according to her sister.

   Saciido Shaie, a Somali activist in Minnesota, said Nalayeh had wanted her two sons and younger generations of the Somalian diaspora to know about her country of birth.

   "She was like, `I will take this platform and I will use it to shed a light both to Somalians in Somalia and Somalians outside," Shaie said, adding "I'm heartbroken" at her death.

   Aw Hirsi, who knew Nalayeh's husband from their time together as government ministers in Jubbaland, described him as a dedicated husband.

   "He was a magnificent, creative guy who deeply cared for the (average) man. He was so kind, so understanding and down to Earth," Hirsi said.

   Shaie said when someone asked Nalayeh what she would like to be remembered for, the journalist said she didn't want to be "famous and all of that."

   Rather, she said, Nalayeh responded: "I just want people to remember me as someone who is a unifier."


   ---

Terror attack on Kismayo, Somalia Hotel. 26 Dead

The Asasey Hotel in Kismayo, Somali after Al Shabab Terror Attack

By ABDI GULED
Associated Press

   MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Islamic extremists blew up the gate of a Somali hotel with a car bomb and took over the building for more than 14 hours, leaving 26 people dead before Somali forces who besieged the hotel overnight killed the attackers. The victims included a prominent Canadian-Somali journalist.

   Three Kenyans, three Tanzanians, two Americans and a Briton also were among the dead, said Ahmed Madobe, the president of Jubbaland regional state which controls Kismayo. Fifty-six people, including two Chinese, were injured in the hotel attack, he told reporters.

   At least four al-Shabab assailants attacked the Asasey Hotel Friday evening, beginning with a suicide car bomb at the entrance gate and followed by an assault by gunmen who stormed the hotel, which is frequented by politicians, patrons and lawmakers.

   The attack lasted more than 14 hours before troops shot dead all attackers inside the hotel compound, Col. Abdiqadir Nur, a local police officer, told The Associated Press.

   Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, claimed responsibility for the attack. Al-Shabab, which is allied to al-Qaida, often uses car bombs to infiltrate heavily fortified targets like the hotel in Kismayo, which has been relatively quiet in recent years.

   The attack is a blow to the Somalia government's efforts to hold nation-wide, one-person one-vote elections next year.

   Security officials cordoned off the site of the attack and prevented journalists from taking photos or video of the damaged hotel and in some cases destroyed journalists' cameras. Government officials have not been available for further interviews.

   Canadian journalist Hodan Nalayeh and her husband, Farid Jama Suleiman, died in the attack, Mogadishu-based independent radio station Radio Dalsan confirmed to AP.

   "I'm absolutely devastated by the news of the death of our dear sister Hodan Nalayeh and her husband in a terrorist attack in Somalia today. What a loss to us. Her beautiful spirit shined through her work and the way she treated people," Omar Suleiman, a Texas-based imam who knew the victim, wrote on social media.

   Nalayeh was born in Somalia in 1976, but spent most of her life in Canada, first in Alberta and then in Toronto. She founded Integration TV, an international web-based video production company aimed at Somali viewers around the world. She was the first Somali woman media owner in the world.

   Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Ahmed Hussen mourned Hodan Nalayeh's death on Twitter, saying she "highlighted the community's positive stories and contributions in Canada" through her work as a journalist. "We mourn her loss deeply, and all others killed in the (hash)KismayoAttack," he wrote.

   Nalayeh's endless "positivity" and "love for people" was inspiring, said Canada's New Democratic Party leader Andrea Horwath on Twitter.

   "In Ontario, Hodan launched (at)IntegrationTV to tell the beautiful stories of the Somali Diaspora, and took that same humanity and love to her reporting and storytelling in Somalia. My thoughts are with her family, and the victims of the (hash)Kismayo attack during this horrific time."

   A top official of the African Union condemned the attack.

   "This is an attack meant to derail progress in Somalia as the country rebuilds and consolidates the gains made on peace and security," said Francisco Madeira, special representative of the chairman of the African Union Commission. "Somalia has made tremendous progress in seizing territory and pushing out the terrorists from many places across the country."

   He said the African Union's multinational force in Somalia will continue to work to stabilize the country.

   ---

Watu 26 wauawa Burundi Leo!

DEALDY ATTACK IN BURUNDI


By ELOGE WILLY KANEZA
Associated Press

Archive Photo

   BUJUMBURA, Burundi (AP) - Twenty-six people were killed and seven others wounded in an attack in a rural area of Burundi, the country's security minister said Saturday, calling it the work of a "terrorist group" he did not identify.

   Speaking at the scene, Alain Guillaume Bunyoni told reporters that 24 people were killed in their homes Friday night and two others died of their wounds at a local hospital.

   He gave no further details about the attack in the Ruhagarika community of the rural northwestern province of Cibitoke.

   The attack came shortly before Burundians vote May 17 in a controversial referendum that could extend the president's term. It was not immediately clear if the attack was related.

   One survivor told The Associated Press the attackers came around 10 p.m. local time and "attacked households and set fire on houses." Some victims were hacked with machetes and others were shot or burned alive, she said.

   Her husband and two children were killed, she said. She spoke on condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns.

   This East African country has seen deadly political violence since early 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza successfully pursued a disputed third term. An estimated 1,200 people died.

   Now Burundians are being asked to vote on a proposal to extend the president's term from five years to seven, which would allow Nkurunziza to rule for another 14 years when his current term expires in 2020.

   Campaigns ahead of the referendum have been marred by hate speech, with one ruling party official sent to prison after he called for those who oppose the referendum to be drowned.

   The United States earlier this month denounced "violence, intimidation, and harassment" against those thought to oppose the referendum and expressed concern about the "non-transparent process" of changing the constitution.

   Human Rights Watch has noted "widespread impunity" for authorities and their allies, including the ruling party's youth wing, as they try to swing the vote in the president's favor.

   Many in Burundi, a poor country that still relies heavily on foreign aid, worry that a new round of bloodshed will follow the referendum no matter its results.

   Already more than 400,000 people have fled the country since the political unrest began in April 2015, according to the United Nations.

   Nkurunziza, a former rebel leader, rose to power in 2005 following the end of Burundi's civil war that killed about 300,000 people. He was re-elected unopposed in 2010 after the opposition boycotted. He said he was eligible for a third term in 2015 because lawmakers, not the general population, chose him for his first term.


   Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP-Africa

 

Mgaidi Aliyeshirki Kulipua Ubalozi za Marekani Dar na Nairobi Afariki Dunia!

Mmoja wa magaidi walioshirki katika kulipua ubalozi za Marekani Dar es Salaam na Nairobi mwaka 1998 amefariki dunia.  Abu Anas al-Libi, amefariki kutokana na ugonjwa wa ini. Ilikuwa afikishwe mahakamani wiki ijayo!  Katika tukio hiyo zaidi ya watu 224 walifariki, wakiwemo waTanzania, WaKenya na WaMarekani. Al- Libi alikuwa na miaka 50.

 Abu Anas Al-Libi  na Ubalozi wa Marekani jini Dar es Salaam baada ya kulipuliwa mwaka 1998

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By MAGGIE MICHAEL

   CAIRO (AP) - Fifteen years after allegedly helping al-Qaida plot the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Abu Anas al-Libi parked his car on a quiet street in Libya's capital.

   Within moments, soldiers from the U.S. Army's elite Delta Force forced him at gunpoint into a van and sped away. They'd fly him to a naval ship in the Mediterranean Sea before finally bringing him to New York to stand trial on charges of helping kill 224 people, including a dozen Americans, and wound more than 4,500.

   But al-Libi, who pleaded innocent to the charges against him, wouldn't live to see his trial start Jan. 12. He died Friday night at a New York hospital of complications stemming from a recent liver surgery, his wife and authorities said Saturday. He was 50.

   Al-Libi, once wanted by the FBI with a $5 million bounty on his head, was chronically ill with hepatitis C when the soldiers seized him. His wife, who asked to be identified as Um Abdullah, told The Associated Press that his experience only worsened his ailments.

   "I accuse the American government of kidnapping, mistreating, and killing an innocent man. He did nothing," Um Abdullah said.

   In a federal court filing Saturday, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said al-Libi died after being taken from New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center to a local hospital.

   "Despite the care provided at the hospital, his condition deteriorated rapidly and (he) passed away," Bharara wrote.

   Al-Libi, which means "of Libya" in Arabic, was his nom de guerre. Also known as Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, U.S. prosecutors in 2000 described al-Libi as sitting on a council that approved terrorist operations for al-Qaida, which would become infamous worldwide a year later after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

   Before that, al-Qaida's Aug. 7, 1998, truck bombings at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were its deadliest assault. The bombs tore through the embassies and nearby buildings, killing 213 people and wounding some 4,500 in Kenya alone. The Tanzania attack, conducted minutes later, killed 11 people and wounded 85.

   Al-Libi, believed to be a computer specialist for al-Qaida, conducted visual and photographic surveillance of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi in late 1993, the federal court indictment against him and others alleges. In 1994, he and other al-Qaida members researched alternate potential sites in Nairobi including the local office of the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as "British, French and Israeli targets," according to the indictment.

   His path to Kenya and al-Qaida remains unclear. Al-Libi is believed to have spent time in Sudan, where Osama bin Laden was based in the early 1990s. After bin Laden was forced to leave Sudan, al-Libi turned up in Britain in 1995 where he was granted political asylum under unclear circumstances and lived in Manchester. He was arrested by Scotland Yard in 1999, but released because of lack of evidence and later fled Britain. After his indictment in December 2000 over the embassy bombings, U.S. officials said they believed he was hiding in Afghanistan.

   Al-Libi later said in court filings that he returned to Libya as dissent against dictator Moammar Gadhafi grew into an open revolt that led to the leader's downfall and killing in 2011. He said he "joined with forces of NATO and the United States" to replace Gadhafi, hoping to establish a "stable Islamic secular state."

   In October 2013, the U.S. Army's Delta Force swooped into Tripoli and seized al-Libi after dawn prayers, his brother Nabih al-Ruqai said. Al-Libi said the soldiers took him to the USS San Antonio, where CIA agents interrogating him warned the questioning would be the "easiest step" of three.

   "I took this to mean that the physical and psychological torture would only increase if I failed to cooperate with my questioners," he said in a court affidavit. "These threats continued the entire time I was on board the ship."

   Al-Libi's lawyer, Bernard Kleinman, argued his client didn't plan the bombing.

   "This case involves issues much more tinged with emotion and trauma than other cases," Kleinman said in 2013. "The fact that Mr. al-Libi will be tried in New York, barely a half mile from the World Trade Center site, and that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida will be referenced numerous times in connection with his co-defendants cannot be ignored."

   Al-Libi isn't the only terror suspect to be snatched by U.S. special forces in Libya. American troops last year grabbed Ahmed Abu Khattala, a suspect in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

   The ability for U.S. troops to move freely in Libya reflects the chaos gripping the country beset by rival militias and political factions in the years since Gadhafi's downfall. Battles openly rage in its east and west as Islamic militant groups have turned coastline cities and border areas into safe havens.

   Libya's rival governments had no immediate reaction to al-Libi's death.

   Al-Libi's wife said Saturday her husband underwent liver surgery three weeks ago, went into a brief coma and was moved prematurely back to prison. She said the last time she spoke to al-Libi, "his voice was weak and he was in a bad condition."

   On Friday, she said a lawyer told her that al-Libi had been taken to a hospital and put on a ventilator.

   She added: "He was dying then."

The Westgate Mall Massacre in Pictures

The horror of the Westgate Mall Massacre in Nairobi, Kenya. May the souls of those killed rest in eternal peace. Amen. WARNING - It is graphic.

http://totallycoolpix.com/2013/09/graphic-the-westgate-shopping-center-shootings-in-kenya/

Shooting victim being led to safety

Shooting victim being led to safety

Kenyan woman mourns the loss of her loved one

Names of the Injured

Nursery school Children at a Cooking competition were also shot & killed! The killers had no mercy!

Mabinti waKizungu Wamwagiwa Tindikali Mjini Zanzibar

 Jamani, kisa cha kuwaumiza watoto wa watu? Hao mabinti walikuwa Zanzibar kama walimu wa Kiingereza, kisa cha kuwaumiza?  Je, hao wahuni waliwamwagia tindikali watakamatwa?

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Two British women injured in Zanzibar Acid Attack

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One of the two British teenage victims of an acid attack is comforted by an unidentified man in a vehicle …

Kutoka Yahoo News

By Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Men riding a motorbike threw acid at two British teenage girls in Tanzania's semi-autonomous Zanzibar region, leaving them with facial, chest and back injuries, a senior police official said on Thursday.

The pair, both 18 and from England's northern city of Manchester according to police in the Indian Ocean archipelago, were flown to Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam.
They had been volunteering at a local school in Zanzibar, an island that is popular with international tourists but has suffered a wave of deadly protests last year as supporters of an Islamist group repeatedly clashed with the police.

Britain is concerned about Wednesday's attack and is "in contact with the Tanzanian authorities", the Foreign Office said in a statement.

The police described the attack as "an isolated incident", refusing to link it to rising religious tension on the island between majority Muslims and its Christian population.

"The attackers approached the girls as they were walking on a street at around 7:15 p.m. and threw acid at them," Zanzibar Urban West regional police commander Mkadam Khamis Mkadam told Reuters. "The incident occurred when the streets were deserted as most people were breaking their Ramadan fast."
Television images showed one girl obviously in pain in the back of a car at the Zanzibar airport.
"The victims sustained facial, chest and back injuries from the acid attack," Mkadam said.
The Britons were expected to fly home on Thursday.

The attack comes during the tourist season in the historic town and after a Zanzibar Muslim leader, Sheikh Fadhil Suleiman Soraga, was hospitalized with acid burns in a November attack.
Two Christian leaders were killed early this year in separate attacks.

A separatist group in Zanzibar, Uamsho (Awakening), is pushing for the archipelago to exit from its 1964 union with mainland Tanzania, which is ruled as a secular country. Uamsho wants to introduce Islamic Sharia law in Zanzibar.

Supporters of the group have engaged in running street battles with the police in the past, but authorities have not linked the group with the attacks on Christian clerics.

Kwa Habari Zaidi Tembelea BBC.Com