Local chief beheaded in Kenya, al-Shabab claims responsibility

The al-Shabab terrorist 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.

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.

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.

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.

SS