Kenya Authorities Arrests at Least 11 Following Hotel Attack in Nairobi

NAIROBI, LELEMUKU.COM - Kenyan authorities have made more arrests in connection with last Tuesday's terrorist attack in Nairobi. Meanwhile, Kenyan officials are vowing to prevent further attacks.

Kenya's top security agencies met in the coastal city of Mombasa to discuss ways to improve security and prevent attacks by militant group al-Shabab. The Islamist extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack on the Dusit D2 hotel and office complex that killed at least 21 civilians.

Speaking at the conference, Interior Minister Fred Matiangi said Kenyan forces are ready to repulse any attack.

"We are alert, and we remain alert 24/7. We are on duty 24/7 to serve our people to ensure that our country remains secure and safe. And anyone who bets on attempting to disrupting our peace got some answers last week, and they will get many answers if they try as we get along."

Kenyan officials say police and army troops killed all five gunmen who attacked the Dusit complex.

Since then, authorities have arrested at least 11 people in connection with the attack, including four suspects who surrendered to police Monday in the eastern town of Isiolo. Dozens more have been brought in for questioning.

Authorities acknowledge that al-Shabab continues to pose a threat.

A sub-county police commander Garissa County, Aaron Ombeo, said security officers stopped a suspected terrorist attack on a construction site.

"Unfortunately, as they were attempting to get to the premises they shot at a female. She is stable, she is undergoing treatment at Garissa. Security officers were guarding the facility, they had to respond to the extent the attackers fled to an unknown destination. We are still out there looking for the attackers," said Ombeo.

Nairobi based security expert Richard Tuta said al-Shabab is taking advantage of Kenya's political freedoms to operate. He said the country needs to strike a balance between freedom and national security.

"The moment you hear a country being an open political system, it is a fact that some aspect of fundamental human rights are so much respected, including but not limited to the fact that [there is] a right to privacy. And the moment there is aspect of privacy, freedom of media, they serve as a conducive enabling environment for the operation of a terrorist organization," he said.

Kenya continues to be on high alert, and security has been heightened in areas where al-Shabab is suspected to be recruiting youth and might have sleeper cells. (VOA)

Ethiopia Readies 'Massive Offensive' on al-Shabab in Somalia

ADDIS ABABA, LELEMUKU.COM - The Ethiopian National Defense Force on Saturday confirmed an ambush by al-Shabab extremists on an Ethiopian peacekeeping convoy in neighboring Somalia and said Ethiopian forces are preparing a “massive offensive” in response.

The statement rejected an al-Shabab claim that several Ethiopian troops were killed.

The ambush was reported as the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the deadly hotel assault in Nairobi and deadly attacks on forces inside Somalia.

Ethiopia contributes troops to a multinational African Union peacekeeping mission. It also has troops in Somalia independently under Ethiopian army command.

The statement said the ambush occurred when the convoy was traveling Burhakaba to Baidoa in Somalia’s southwest.

A separate statement by the AU force said the ambush occurred on Friday and AU troops returned fire, killing four extremists and wounding several others.

Three soldiers with the AU force were wounded, the statement said.

Al-Shabab, which formed more than a decade ago in response to the presence of Ethiopian forces inside Somalia, among other reasons, has never managed to orchestrate a major attack inside the Ethiopian heartland, though it has carried out major attacks in neighboring Kenya.

In late October, al-Shabab claimed killing 30 Ethiopian troops inside Somalia. Weeks before that, Ethiopian state media outlets reported that the Ethiopian Air Force killed 70 al-Shabab members after the extremist group tried to attack Ethiopian forces. (VOA)

African Fishing Communities Face 'Extinction' as Blue Economy Grows

NAIROBI, LELEMUKU.COM - Fishing communities along Africa's coastline are at a greater risk of extinction as countries eye oceans for tourism, industrial fishing and exploration revenue to jumpstart their "blue economies," U.N. experts and activists said on Monday.

The continent's 38 coastal and island states have in recent years moved to tap ocean resources through commercial fishing, marine tourism and sea-bed mining, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

"There is a great risk and a great danger that those communities will be marginalized," said Joseph Zelasney, a fishery officer at U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

"The resources that they depend on will be decimated," he added at a side event at the Blue Economy Conference organized by Kenya, Canada and Japan in Nairobi.

The world's poorest continent hosts a blue economy estimated at $1 trillion but loses $42 billion a year to illegal fishing and logging of mangroves along the coast, according to UNECA estimates.

Seismic waves generated by prospectors to search for minerals, oil and gases along the ocean floor have scared away fish stocks, said Dawda Saine of the Confederation of African Artisanal Fishing in Gambia.

"Noise and vibration drives fishes away, which means they (fishermen) have to go further to fish," Saine said.

Pollution from a vibrant tourism sector and foreign trawlers have reduced stocks along the Indian Ocean, Salim Mohamed, a fisherman from Malindi in Kenya, said.

"We suffer as artisanal fishers but all local regulation just look at us as the polluter and doesn't go beyond that," he said.

The continent's fish stocks are also being depleted by industrial trawlers which comb the oceans to feed European and Asian markets, experts say, posing a threat to livelihoods and food security for communities living along the coast.

Growth of blue economies in Africa could also take away common rights to land and water along the coastline and transfer them to corporations and a few individuals, said Andre Standing, advisor with the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements.

Most of the land and beaches along Africa's thousands of miles of coastline is untitled, making it a good target for illegal acquisition, activists said.

"There is a great worry that we could see privatization of areas that were previously open to these communities," Standing told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "We need to have a radical vision that values communities and livelihoods or they will become extinct." (VOA)