Tag: GreatLakesNews

{Five people died Saturday morning in a crash involving a matau and an oil tanker at Kahoya in Timboroa on the Eldoret-Nakuru highway.}

The matatu belonging to Eldoret Sacco was heading to Eldoret from Nairobi while the tanker was heading towards Nakuru during the midnight incident.

The driver of the matatu, three passengers, and the tanker driver died on the spot.

Injured passengers were rushed to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret.

The bodies of the deceased were taken to Eldama Ravine Hospital mortuary.

The tanker had no fuel.

The area is black spot, according to locals.

{President John Magufuli has revoked the appointment of Dr Mwele Malecela,Director General of National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR).
}

According to State House press release, a new Director General of National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) will be picked later.

This come barely two days since the institution announced their study findings showing that 15.6 per cent of the 533 people whose blood samples were tested had Zika virus.

Ministry of Health has already refuted the study saying there is no Zika virus in the country.

{Bujumbura – Burundian police have accused Belgian diplomats of having amassed people of various nationalities, possibly with a view to undermining the security of the state.}

Blocks of flats for Belgian Nationals were searched in a residential neighbourhood of the capital Bujumbura on Thursday morning.

The Public Information Officer to the National Police, Pierre Nkurikiye, told reporters the police acted because it had information that there were people of different nationalities, “possibly aiming at threatening the state security” who were being housed near the Belgian residences. He didn’t give the number of the alleged suspects but only said they included citizens from Senegal, Rwanda, Guinea and Burundian women.

“No arrests have been carried out, but the police sent report to the relevant officials for necessary actions,” he said. The police spokesman added that diplomat residences were not searched.

This was also confirmed by the Belgian Consulate in Burundi. However, the Belgian embassy told the African News Agency (ANA) THAT it had not been informed of why the search was carried out. Relations between Burundi and Brussels have been deteriorating since the country descended into a new crisis, following the decision of President Pierre Nkurunziza to bid for a controversial term.

The Burundian ambassador to Belgium was recalled last week in a sign of further declining relations between the two countries.

The Burundi Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Aimé Nyamitwe indicated that the relations between their two countries were not at the desired level. Bujumbura has been accusing Brussels of being behind nearly all the problems the country is currently facing since the latest crisis broke out in April 2015.

{President Museveni is today expected to address the ruling party’s parliamentary caucus on the circumstances that triggered the military assault on Rwenzururu Kingdom’s Buhikira palace last month.}

President Museveni is today expected to address the ruling party’s parliamentary caucus on the circumstances that triggered the military assault on Rwenzururu Kingdom’s Buhikira palace last month.

At least 116 people have been confirmed to have died during the raid, which also reportedly left an unknown number of both adults and children either injured or missing.

Mr Museveni has not made any public comments about the killings or torching of the palace that occurred on November 27 and the tensions, which have been raging in the Rwenzori sub-region over the past month.

Mr Museveni has come under criticism for his role in ordering the attacks. MPs from the affected areas say they are preparing to file a suit in the International Criminal Court calling for the prosecution of senior military and other officers suspected to have committed crimes against humanity during the military assault.

Mr Museveni is only quoted as having told army high command members on December 7 that King Mumbere refused orders to disarm, disband and surrender the royal guards, thus justifying the raid on his palace.

Rwenzori killings
Yesterday, government chief whip Ruth Nankabirwa could not definitively indicate whether the President will tackle the dicey issue of the killings in the Rwenzori sub-region.

“They [MPs] will find the agenda in State House. That’s a tough question for me. The President will come with his programmes. This is a caucus meeting where I am not fully in charge of the agenda. We have members’ issues. If time allows, we might handle that [Kasese killings] as we wait for the host. But if he [the President] comes on time, we will begin on his agenda, “Ms Nankabirwa said.

Summons
Caucus spokespeson Margaret Muhanga confirmed that Mr Museveni had summoned NRM MPs to State House, Entebbe but could not say what is on the agenda of the meeting because she was just arriving from a trip abroad.

Rwenzururu King Charles Wesley Mumbere and at least 150 co-accused were on Wednesday arraigned before the Jinja Magistrate’s Court and charged with terrorism, treason, aggravated robbery and causing malicious damage.

The charges relate to attacks on the police in far western Uganda since March. King Mumbere faces separate murder charges involving the unrelated death of police constable Godfrey Kasimba on March 24, 2016.

{A family in Nyayo Estate, Embakasi, Nairobi, has lived with the body of their son in the attic of their maisonette’s for 28 months.}

It was only on Wednesday evening when a visiting cousin of the deceased stumbled on the skeleton when he went up to the attic to check on a water tank.

Now police have launched investigations into the mysterious death.

On Wednesday evening the family of Lucy Kina Munyi reported that they had found the skeleton of their son, who went missing 28 months ago.

{{DISAPPEARED IN 2014}}

Peter Njagi Munyi, who was 22 then, went missing in August 2014.

Police on Thursday sought to know how the family managed to live with the stench.

Officers said that even after interrogating the family it was still not clear how the body remained in the attic undetected despite evidence that the trapdoor was opened frequently.

Even a neighbour who shares the same roof had not reported any foul smell.

Ms Munyi’s visiting nephew, Nicassio Mbogo, went to the attic to check the water tank and found the body.

{{NO FOLLOW-UP}}

Mr Mbogo said in a statement to the police that he first saw a pair of shoes about four metres from the trapdoor. On taking a closer look, he saw a human skeleton on a mattress.

Next to the remains was a bag containing the clothes the family said belonged to Mr Munyi.

The square-metre trapdoor appeared to have been opened regularly, according to detectives.

The family owns the three-bedroom maisonette, number 208.

The family said they could positively identify the body by the clothes and the shoes.

{{EFFORTS TO TRACE SON}}

Ms Munyi said that she reported to the Embakasi Police Station on August 2014 that her son was missing but could not remember the exact date.

By Thursday evening police had not confirmed whether the disappearance was actually reported.

It could not be established whether the family made any efforts to find their missing kin.

“The mother said they reported at Embakasi in August 2014. She, however, did not make a follow-up,” an investigator said.

The remains were photographed and taken to the Chiromo Mortuary to establish the cause of death.

The mattress, the clothes, the pair of shoes and other samples were taken as exhibits.

{{PROBE TO START}}

A post-mortem examination was conducted on Thursday by the government pathologist, but the results were not released.

The nephew who discovered the body, Mr Mbogo, had been grilled by the police.

Police also took a statement from Lawrence Njeru, Mr Munyi’s brother.

He was in the house when the body was found.

A security guard on duty on Wednesday evening said she only saw a police vehicle parked near the gate.

The estate chairman, blogger Robert Alai, said the matter was never brought to their attention.

Mr Alai said the family reported the macabre find to the police and the remains were taken away without any of the neighbours noticing.

Ms Munyi, the owner of Kina Wear Stores, was one of the main suppliers of Uchumi Supermarkets.

Nairobi County police commander Japheth Koome on Thursday said an inquest file had been opened.

{Due to the clashes between the Congolese army and Mayi-Mayi militia since 2 December, 796 Congolese asylum seekers have been sheltered at the Cishemere Congolese refugees’ transit site, in the province of Cibitoke, North-west of Burundi. 200 among them who are already recognized by Burundi government as Congolese refugees have been transferred to Kavumu Refugee Camp in Cankuzo, South-eastern province of Burundi.}

“We were sleeping at 5 pm when we heard heavy gunfire from four positions in different villages. We hid under the beds and other neighbors went to hide in the forest. We were stuck there until 3am. We finally decided to join others in the forest. We stayed there for three days. After the third day, we took the road to Burundi because we risked dying of starvation. We reached the Rusizi River on 5 December, “said Nema Heda, one of the asylum seekers from Nyamwoma locality in South Kivu in DRC.

She says that the Red Cross agents and the Burundian soldiers took them from the river to the Cishemere transit site where they have been living since 5 December.

Heda says that these refugees live an unhappy life in the Cishemere site and hope to have refugee status very soon.

“Here we do not receive enough food and living conditions are deplorable. We do not have cooking utensils and equipment. We sleep on the floor. We look forward to being taken to the Cankuzo Congolese refugee camp where we hope living conditions are better than here, “she said.

Sikitu, another asylum seeker from Nyamwoma locality asks the Burundian government to issue them with a refugee status as soon as possible to be transferred to the Congolese refugee camp. “Here, we are dying of hunger, we lead a miserable life,” says Sikitu.

Red Cross Burundi manages Cishemere Congolese refugees’ transit site

The Red Cross Burundi, which is in charge of the Cishemere transit site of the Congolese refugees, says the site recorded 142 families of 796 people from 5 to 13 December. 200 people have been transferred to the Kavumu Congolese refugee camp in Cankuzo south-eastern province of Burundi after being granted the status of Congolese refugees in Burundi by the National Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons-ONPRA.

The Red-Cross Burundi also says the refugees live in difficult conditions in the transit site of Cishemere: “The site has the capacity to only accommodate 510 people and currently houses 586 people”. To address this problem, the Red Cross, together with its partners, is building rooms to extend the accommodation capacity of the site.

Our source says only most vulnerable people get mattresses while others sleep on the floor. The Red Cross distributes food (legumes, beans, corn flour, cooking oil, salt… ) to the refugees after each seven days.

Created in 2013, the transit site of Cishemere is intended only for Congolese refugees recognized by the government of Burundi.

{Since the end of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003, the family of the outgoing President Joseph Kabila is reported to have flourished by owning at least 70 companies.}

According to a Bloomberg report published on Thursday, December 15, 2016, the scope the Kabila empire has recently become visible after Congolese regulators computerized and made corporate and government records publicly available.

“Bloomberg News, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, traced the Kabilas’ interests by amassing an archive of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate documents that shows his wife, two children and eight of his siblings control more than 120 permits to dig gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt and other minerals,” said the report.

“Two of the family’s businesses alone own diamond permits that stretch more than 450 miles across Congo’s southwestern border with Angola. Family members also have stakes in banks, farms, fuel distributors, airline operators, a road builder, hotels, a pharmaceutical supplier, travel agencies, boutiques and nightclubs. Another venture even tried to launch a rat into space on a rocket,” it added.

The report, which included a diagram showing a network of names and companies linked to the President’s family, said the family also has dozens of joint ventures and shell corporations through which it holds stakes to varying degrees in all manner of industries.

“That creates a system so pervasive that even seemingly innocuous payments—such as rent paid by the UN for a police station—end up finding their way to the Kabila family, an analysis of the network shows,” it said.

Bloomberg attempted to speak to President Kabila on the issue through the government spokesman Lambert Mende and the family’s aid Theodore Mugalu, but was in vain.

“Government spokesman Lambert Mende said he couldn’t comment on issues concerning the president’s family, which he considered a private matter. When asked how Bloomberg News could direct questions to Kabila, he said the president does not talk to Western media,” the report stated.

“Why is he refusing to go? For the sake of power? To protect the family business? Probably a bit of both,” it questioned.

Kabila came into power in 2001 when he was 29 years old after his father, Laurent Kabila, who served as president since 1997 was assassinated by his own bodyguard.

Kabila is required by constitutional term limits to step down when his second mandate ends on December 19 but a constitutional court ruled that he can stay on until a new successor is elected.

Elections have been postponed to April 2018 after the electoral commission complained of inadequate resources to conduct the process.

The opposition accuse Kabila of manipulating the system to cling on to power, while a faction of the opposition has agreed and through a national dialogue, got one of its members appointed Prime Minister.

The main opposition coalition led by Étienne Tshisekedi has organised series of protests met with violence by the police. They plan to hit the streets on December 19 to unseat Kabila.

World Bank data show that nearly two-thirds of the 77 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo live on less than $1.90 per day.

{It is reported that eight unknown gunmen raided the newly established hotel located at Cathedral village in Alito parish last Sunday.}

Police in Lira District are investigating an attack on Lira Valley Resort Hotel, Ojwina Division in Lira Municipality that reportedly left property worth over Shs200 million looted.

It is reported that eight unknown gunmen raided the newly established hotel located at Cathedral village in Alito parish last Sunday; robbed wall fence construction materials and dismantled road construction machines.

The hotel director, Mr Geoffrey Omongo, who also works as an accountant with the Finance ministry, said he didn’t know the attackers’ motive.

“I’m very worried,” he told Daily Monitor on Wednesday. “It appears their aim was to kill me.”

According Mr Omongo, property stolen during the raid included angle bars, and parts of the dismantled road construction equipment; wheel loader, excavator and rollers.

A security guard Samuel Ola, who was deployed at the hotel on Sunday night, said he witnessed everything as it happened but couldn’t help much since he was only in possession of a spear.

“I have reported the case to Lira Central Police Station. Police visited the scene of crime and went back, and these people again came back [Sunday night] after the police officers had left and they told me that if you put all your effort here, we will kill you first before killing the owner of the hotel,” Mr Ola said.

North Kyoga regional police spokesperson, Mr David Ongom Mudong, confirmed the incident, adding that investigations are ongoing.

“This is a matter of security and therefore will not be taken for granted. Many people have lost their lives in this town, we will try our best to ensure that the culprits are brought to book,” he said.