Free Republic

"Most" of the hostages who have been holed up at an upscale shopping mall in Kenya's capital after it was attacked by members of an Al Qaeda-linked Somali militant group on Saturday have been freed, Kenya's military says. Kenya's armed forces launched a "major" assault on the militants on Sunday night -- about 30 hours after the Islamists stormed the Nairobi mall in an attack that left at least 68 dead and 175 injured. At around midnight local time, Kenya's Defence Forces said it had rescued most hostages and had taken control of most of the mall, but declined to...

A huge fire destroyed a large part of Nairobi’s international airport early on Wednesday, closing East Africa's most important transport hub with dozens of high-season holiday flights diverted and disruption expected to last days. It is the 15th anniversary of al-Qaeda attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania but officials said there was no immediate indication the fire was caused by a bomb or a deliberate act. The Kenya Red Cross said that there were no reports of casualties.

Boys rescued from Kenya's Islamic school of torture By Declan Walsh in Nairobi 30 January 2003 Eleven teenage boys have been rescued from an Islamic correction centre in Nairobi where they were chained, tortured, and indoctrinated with violent anti-Christian ideas. Armed police raided the school in a rundown Nairobi neighbourhood after Guleed Ahmed, a 16-year-old from Leicester, faked an illness to escape and raise the alarm. Inside they found 10 other boys, from Kenya, Sweden and Ethiopia, chained by their hands and feet and confined to a dark, foul-smelling room. "It was really terrible," Guleed said yesterday. "They locked my...