Kenyan flooding leaves 13 people dead
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Heavy rains pounding different parts of Kenya have led to the deaths of at least 13 people and displaced about 15,000 people, the United Nations said, and forecasters warn that more rains can be expected until June.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, citing the Kenya Red Cross Society, said Thursday that nearly 20,000 people were affected, including an estimated 15,000 people displaced by heavy rains and flash floods across the country since the start of the wet season in mid-March.
The East African country has seen thousands of people killed by flooding in previous rainy seasons, mostly in the lake regions and downstream of major rivers.
The Kenya Red Cross Society told The Associated Press that five major roads were cut off by floods, including Garissa Road in northern Kenya where a bus carrying 51 passengers was swept away Tuesday. All passengers were rescued.
Kenya's disaster management agency issued a flood warning to residents of Lamu, Tana River and Garissa counties that are downstream of the Tana River after flooding breached dams upstream.
So far, nine of 47 counties in the country have reported flooding incidents.
The Kenya Red Cross Society's secretary general, Ahmed Idris, told Citizen TV that "lifesaving assistance" including shelter and clean drinking water was being offered to those displaced and are living in camps to avert outbreaks of waterborne diseases.
Turkey cable car crash kills 1, hurts 7
ISTANBUL -- One person was killed and seven were injured Friday when a cable car pod in southern Turkey hit a pole and burst open, sending the passengers plummeting to the mountainside below, local media reported.
Two children were among the injured in the accident on the Tunektepe cable car just outside the Mediterranean city of Antalya at about 6 p.m. during the busy Eid al-Fitr holiday, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.
Anadolu identified the deceased as a 54-year-old Turkish man and said six Turkish citizens and one Kyrgyz national were injured.
Five of the injured were ferried off the mountain by helicopter, and efforts continued to remove the other two injured people, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said three hours after the accident.
Some 184 other passengers were trapped in 25 other cable car pods dozens of feet above the ground as engineers tried to restart the system, Antalya Mayor Muhittin Bocek said in a statement. Helicopters with night vision imaging were heading to the site, he said.
Search and rescue agency AFAD later said 49 people had been rescued from the suspended pods, leaving 135 still stranded about six hours after the accident.
4 women found dead in boat off Spain
MADRID -- The bodies of four women have been found in a rubber dinghy off the coast of southeast Spain, authorities said Friday.
The government office in the southeast city of Murcia said the boat was towed by marine rescue services to the port of Cartagena early Friday after being spotted by coast guards.
It said the women appeared to be of North African origin and may have been migrants trying to reach Spain. Migrants regularly use such boats to reach Spain from northwest Africa.
Autopsies are scheduled, the office said.
No other occupants were found in the boat and it was not immediately known if there had been any beforehand.
Ethiopian militia, police clash; 3 die
NAIROBI, Kenya -- A shootout between militiamen and police officers killed three people Friday in the Ethiopian capital in a rare case of the country's many regional rebellions spilling into the city.
The violence occurred near Millennium Hall in Addis Ababa's downtown as officers tried to apprehend three fighters from a militia known as Fano. The fighters were "on a mission to carry out a terrorist attack," a police statement said.
Two of the militia members were killed and police arrested the third. A bystander also was killed during the gunbattle and two police officers were injured.
"The extremists were asked to surrender but refused to do so," the police statement said.
Ethiopia's security services have been battling a full-blown rebellion by the Fano, an ethno-nationalist group, since August. It was sparked by a disputed plan to integrate regional forces into the federal military and has rendered lawless much of Amhara, Ethiopia's second-biggest region.
Addis Ababa has been largely insulated from Ethiopia's regional revolts. In addition to the violence in Amhara, the federal government is also battling a separate ethnic-based insurgency in Oromia, the country's biggest region.
The shootout in Addis Ababa followed the Tuesday shooting of Bate Urgessa, a prominent opposition figure, in the Oromia town of Meki. The United States, Britain and several other countries have called for a full investigation into his death.