Local chief beheaded in Kenya, al-Shabab claims responsibility

The al-Shabab militant group abducted and beheaded the chief of a clutch of villages in northeastern Kenya near the border with Somalia, local police sources said Wednesday.

Omar Adan Buul, the head of the Gumarey sub-location in Wajir county, was kidnapped on Friday by militants who had raided the area and “lectured the locals,” according to Kenyan media reports.

“It is true the chief who went missing last week on Friday has been found dead. His head was dumped on the road but the rest of the body has not been found,” a local police officer said on condition of anonymity.

Another police officer said, “we have collected the head and taken it to the mortuary.”

“This is the work of Al-Shabab… we are looking for the rest of the body or the parts, we hope it wasn’t taken to the other side,” he added, referring to over the Somali border.

Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the “execution” through their Shahada News Agency, according to the US monitoring group SITE.

The group said it had taken the chief prisoner during an attack that seized control of a Kenyan police outpost, a claim that has not been confirmed.

The al-Qaeda-linked group has been waging a violent insurgency across Somalia seeking to unseat the internationally-backed government in the capital Mogadishu.

They were driven out of Mogadishu by government forces backed by 20,000 African Union peacekeepers in 2011.

But the group still controls swathes of territory outside the cities, from where they launch attacks against government targets, as well as occasionally crossing the border to carry out raids in Kenya.

Al-Shabab has ramped up the intensity of its attacks in Kenya in recent years, including several major assaults as far as the capital Nairobi, which have left nearly 300 dead.

Al-Shabab terrorists kill over dozen army troops in Somalia: Military

At least 13 Somali soldiers are killed after members of the Takfiri al-Shabab terrorist group attack army troops northwest of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, a military official says.

Two demonstrators killed in Zambia protest

Elsewhere in Africa, two demonstrators were killed on Wednesday in a protest outside the police headquarters in the Zambian capital Lusaka, where opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema was being interviewed, an AFP reporter said.

Police arrived to break up a crowd of several hundred demonstrators and shots were heard, leaving the blood-stained bodies of two men on the ground after the crowd fled, he said.

Police issued a statement saying that two people were reportedly killed by gunfire after tear gas was used to disperse an unruly crowd, and that the circumstances were not immediately clear.

Hichilema, 58, is the main contender to President Edgar Lungu in elections due next August.

A veteran campaigner and self-made entrepreneur, he bid five times for the presidency between 2006 and 2016.

After narrowly losing in 2016, he spent four months in jail when he contested the outcome.

Hichilema has vowed to step down as leader of the United Party for National Development (UPND) if he fails again next year.

Lungu, 63, is struggling with a wave of unpopularity and internal divisions within his party, fueled especially by Zambia's economic problems.

The country is heavily dependent on copper, demand for which has slumped.

The reason why Hichilema was called to police headquarters was not immediately known.

(Source: AFP)

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