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Sudan's central government could owe its semiautonomous south hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenue, threatening a 2005 peace deal that ended Sudan's two-decade civil war, a watchdog group said Monday.
Hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees are jammed into camps that are "barely fit for humans," with poor sanitation and little access to water and medicine, an international aid agency said Thursday.
Kenyan security forces tortured hundreds of civilians and raped at least a dozen women during a three-day operation to disarm militias in the country's remote northeast last year, a right group claimed Monday.
After months of hopeful glimmers in one of the most explosive countries in the world, violence again is roiling Somalia as mortars, machine-gun fire and rockets pound the bloodstained capital.
The scrawny teenager promised his mother comfort and riches beyond her wildest dreams.
The U.S. sea captain rescued by U.S. Navy snipers left Kenya on an executive jet early Friday, the first step of a long-awaited journey home to America.
Somali pirates in speedboats opened fire Monday on two cargo ships in the latest hijacking attempts in the notorious Gulf of Aden. Another band of brigands freed a food aid freighter but only after receiving a $100,000 "reward" from Somali businessmen.
The lifeboat containing the tied-up hostage captain of the Maersk Alabama had been bobbing in the water for five days, stalked by a small flotilla of American warships.
U.S. Navy snipers opened fire and killed three pirates holding an American captain at gunpoint in a lifeboat, delivering the skipper unharmed and ending a five-day high-seas hostage drama on Easter Sunday.
When news broke that an American captain held by Somali pirates was rescued Sunday, his crew erupted in cheers and sent red flares screaming into the sky in celebration for a man they hailed as a hero.
U.S. Navy snipers opened fire and killed three pirates holding an American captain at gunpoint, delivering the skipper unharmed and ending a five-day high-seas hostage drama on Easter Sunday.
The pirate standoff with the U.S. Navy has burned Somalia into the West's consciousness as a base for lawlessness and terror, but the hostage crisis illuminates a potentially dangerous picture confronting a far greater area.
For the first three months of 2009, Somalia's notorious pirates faded from the headlines as a massive international naval force moved in, and many observers thought the pirates were running scared.
Kenya's president has signed into law a media bill that opponents say threatens the country's hard-fought reputation for having one of Africa's most vigorous press.
Mary Macharia will never go home again, even though a year has passed since ethnic tensions flared into violence after Kenya's deeply flawed presidential election.
Somali forces raided one of the many ships hijacked off the country's coast Sunday as a deadline loomed in a standoff aboard another, arms-laden vessel, officials said.
After nearly 20 years of violent chaos, Islamic extremism and failed peace talks, impoverished Somalia might seem to have hit rock-bottom. But things are getting worse. The crisis is exceeding even the direst scenarios laid out nearly two years ago, when troops from neighboring Ethiopia arrived to oust a radical Islamic militia and support the Western-backed government.
Somalia's new hard-line opposition leader promised Friday to pacify his shattered country through Islamic law, warning U.N. peacekeepers they will face attack if they deploy and support the government.
Ayan Ali Hassan decided to leave Mogadishu when militiamen boarded her school bus and kidnapped two screaming boys. For Abdi Gadir Osman, the moment came when a mortar slammed into his mother's home, killing her while she slept on a hot afternoon.
Ethiopia's government is committing war crimes in its military campaign against rebels in the Ogaden region, a rights group charged Thursday in a report that complained the U.S. and other Western governments willfully ignored abuses.
Somalia's government signed an agreement Monday with an opposition alliance calling for an end to violence and the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops, whose presence has stoked an increasingly bloody Islamic insurgency.
For the past year, Kennedy Agai has stopped sending money home to his mother. He has walked instead of spending 50 cents on the bus. He has skipped meals whenever he could bear it, all so he could buy shares in East Africa's biggest initial public offering.
Seven Somali pirates were sentenced to life in jail Monday and authorities vowed similarly tough penalties for others in an effort to crack down on a surge in pirate attacks.
The United States has amended a travel advisory cautioning against travel to parts of Kenya, saying threats of violence have "dramatically receded" following a political power-sharing deal.
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.
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