Category World News

At least five bodies have been recovered from shallow graves at a site in Kenya where victims of a religious cult are suspected to have been buried, according to authorities.

Excavations were continuing on Friday at the site on the outskirts of Malindi in southeastern Kenya’s Kilifi County, close to where hundreds of members of a doomsday cult were found dead two years ago.

Government pathologist, Dr Richard Njoroge, said on Thursday that the authorities expected to find more remains at the site.

“At the commencement of this exercise, we had 27 suspected graves. Today we managed to exhume six”, Njoroge said.

The pathologist added: “Of the six graves, we found five bodies. And then also around that area, we found 10 different scattered body parts, scattered in different places on the surface”.

Njoroge stressed that they expected to find more graves because the teams had not exhausted the search in a vast area.

“So we expect more bodies”, the official said.

‘ Starved and suffocated ‘

In July, Kenya’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said it believed victims buried at the site may have been “starved and suffocated as a result of adopting and promoting extreme religious ideologies”.

At least 11 suspects are being investigated in connection with the deaths, the prosecutors said.

People who live around the exhumation site had been unable to account for the whereabouts of several children, leading to suspicion of foul play and triggering investigations, according to the prosecutor’s office.

On Thursday, UN spokesman Daniela Gross assured reporters that the WFP convoy’s drivers and drivers were all safe.

According to a WFP statement that was quoted by the Reuters news agency, at least three of the trucks caught fire. The Associated Press news agency reported that Glass claimed that all trucks had caught fire.

The second UN convoy’s delivery to North Darfur in the past three months was delayed by unknown reasons for Wednesday’s attack, which was not yet known.

The Sudanese army is accused of attacking the convoys in response to a drone attack on Mellit market and other locations by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Later, the army claimed in a statement that this was a fabrication to detract from the crimes committed by the RSF.

Five people were killed and several others were hurt when a convoy from the WFP and UNICEF arrived in North Darfur in early June while waiting for clearance to enter the besieged capital, El-Fasher.

Security guarantees were required because humanitarian workers were being targeted, according to Edem Wosornu of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, who reported that 70 truckloads of supplies were waiting in Nyala, which is under the control of the RSF.

The attack came as several nations, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, and neighboring Egypt, expressed concern about Sudan’s worsening humanitarian situation and demanded pauses in fighting to encourage more aid.

In Khartoum, the country’s capital, was the site of the war that started in April 2023, when violence erupted as a result of persistent tensions between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary RSF. It spread to other parts of the country, including western Darfur.

According to UN agencies, nearly 13 million people have been displaced and nearly 40 000 have died. Acute hunger affects nearly 25 million people.

In areas under their control, notably in the vast Darfur region, where allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity are being investigated, the RSF and their allies announced in late June that they had established a parallel government.

El-Fasher, where the UN claims people are starving, has been encircled by the RSF. The only capital in Darfur, which consists of five states, is that the paramilitary forces don’t control.

As fighting rages, an estimated 300,000 city residents are still under a lengthy siege.

In the displacement camp in North Darfur, a famine was declared last year. According to the UN, the risk of famine has since been spread to 17 areas in Darfur and the Kordofan region, which are adjacent to North Darfur and west of Khartoum.

Following discussions this week between American and European leaders regarding the establishment of a future peacekeeping force in Ukraine should the war end, the president made the remarks.

Why are China’s guarantees excluded? First, Zelenskyy claimed China did not support our initial effort to end this conflict, according to a report released by The Kyiv Post on Thursday.

“Secondly, China aided Russia by opening the drone market,” Zelenskyy claimed.

Beijing has repeatedly urged for a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine war, but Zelenskyy and Western leaders have criticized its continued economic support for Russia.

The Ukrainian leader’s remarks suggest that China will not play a significant role in the Russia-Ukraine peace process, despite Beijing’s ambitions to mediate more international conflicts.

According to Zelenskyy, international security guarantees are required to prevent Russia from launching attacks on Ukraine following a peace agreement, and participants should only be drawn from nations that have supported Kyiv since the Russian invasion of 2022.

In the first direct accusation of its kind against the Ukrainian president, Zelenskyy made the accusation in April that China had supplied weapons to Russia and helped with arms production.

Mao Ning, a spokesman for the Chinese government, refuted the claims and called them “political manipulation.”

The US had previously accused Beijing of providing Russia’s military with essential components for the production of missiles, tanks, aircraft, and other weapons.

China has stated that it has previously only exchanged “dual-use components,” which are those that can be used for both military and civilian purposes.

Due to the close ties between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the leaders of the Russian and Chinese countries, questions about Beijing’s involvement in the conflict have persisted for years.

Putin and Xi met in Beijing just weeks before the Ukrainian invasion, and they both signed a “no limits partnership.”

In spite of severe international sanctions, China has since helped to keep Russia’s economy afloat.

According to Kim, “the combat activities of overseas operational forces demonstrated without a doubt the strength of the heroic [North Korean] army,” and the “liberation of Kursk” demonstrated the “fighting spirit of the heroes,” KCNA reported on Friday.

Our army is now carrying out both its current and previous missions. According to KCNA, it will do it in the future as well, Kim said.

Additionally, he placed a flower at a memorial wall for North Korean soldiers killed overseas, and a concert was held for Russian soldiers, as well as a banquet for bereaved members of their families, according to KCNA.

The North Korean leader hugged apparent emotional family members of fallen soldiers in photos that were released by the news agency.

More than 10,000 soldiers were dispatched by Pyongyang to Russia’s Kursk region in 2024, according to South Korean and Western intelligence agencies, along with long-range rocket systems, missiles, and artillery shells.

According to Seoul’s intelligence, about 600 of those North Korean soldiers died and thousands of others were hurt in a fight for Russia.

Kim’s comments come as Donald Trump, the president of the United States, launches long-awaited diplomatic talks with the leaders of both countries.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has so far avoided meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyyy’s Ukrainian counterpart for peace talks, despite the fact that Moscow’s troops have advanced significantly on the front lines of the conflict.

Russia and North Korea have been establishing increasingly close ties, most recently signing a mutual defense agreement when Putin visited the troubled nation last year.

Following the verdict on Friday, Thaksin, 76, smiled as he left the court with the statement, “The case was dismissed.”

According to Thaksin’s attorney Winyat Chatmontree, the court denied the charges brought against him because the evidence presented was insufficient.

Later, the Bangkok criminal court acknowledged that the case had been dropped due to lack of evidence.

After hearing the verdict, Thaksin’s supporters erupted in ovation outside the court. Red shirts, the political party’s official color, were worn by many in the campaign.

Kamol Orahanta, a 66-year-old food vendor, was one of the 150 supporters gathered outside the court, and he claimed, “The court has done its job properly, but I don’t think we can relax yet.”

Kamol told the AFP news agency, “I think there are still some haters who will try to overthrow him through other means.”

Thailand’s interim prime minister Phumtham Wechayachai welcomed the court’s decision in an interview with reporters, but he denied that it would have a political impact because it was a separate judicial proceeding.

Despite the legal difficulties the Shinawatra family faced, Phumtham claimed that his ruling Pheu Thai Party, which was founded by Thaksin, still has “high morale.”

While the Shinawatra family’s political dynasty will benefit from the court’s dismissal on Friday, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Thailand’s current prime minister, will be facing her own legal reckoning next week with a court ruling that could result in her being removed from office.

The Constitutional Court has suspended Paetongtarn, 39, as prime minister, and she is facing dismissal for an alleged ethics violation involving a phone conversation with former Cambodian leader Hun Sen, which the former Cambodian premier leaked to embarrass the Thai leader.

In September, the Supreme Court will decide whether Thaksin’s six-month hospital stay prior to his release on parole in 2024 for violating his constitutional rights and filing for a conflict of interest charge counted as time served in jail.

Thaksin may have to spend another year in prison if the allegations are brought against him.

When he made comments about a 2014 military coup that overthrew his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, as prime minister, Thaksin allegedly broke Thailand’s strict lese-majeste law in a 2015 interview with foreign media, which was dismissed on Friday.

The palace viewed support for the monarchy as sacrosanct, with Thaksin consistently swearing allegiance to the king, who is referred to in the Thai constitution as having “revered worship.”

In accordance with the contentious lese-majeste laws, which activists claim have been used to silence dissent and sideline political rivals, Thaksin’s case was the most well-known of more than 280 prosecutions in recent years.

According to Thailand’s royalists, such laws must be enforced to safeguard the crown.