A Yemeni man pleaded guilty July 7 to acts of piracy for the hijacking of a US vessel that resulted in the deaths of four US citizens. Mounir Ali pleaded guilty in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to being involved in the hijacking of a US yacht called Quest, in which four Americans were taken hostage and later killed by the pirates. They were the first US citizens to die in the recent wave of international maritime piracy. Ali admitted that he willingly joined four other men in a pirated Somali ship as they attempted to hijack the US vessel. He noted in his plea agreement that he personally did not shoot any of the hostages nor did he order them be shot. Neil MacBride, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said Ali, "admitted today that his greed for ransom money ultimately led to the cold-blooded murder of the four US hostages. This latest guilty plea again shows that modern piracy is far different than the romantic portrayal in summer-time movies. Pirates who attack on US citizens on the high seas will face justice in a US courtroom."

Activists in Nairobi say police used tear-gas against several hundred protesters marching on the offices of Kenya's president and prime minister to demand action over a growing hunger crisis in the East African nation on July 7. Dinah Awuor Agar, the president of a group of low-wage workers known as the People's Parliament, said the demonstrators were holding a peaceful procession when riot police charged them. Agar said police chased down protesters, beat them with batons and arrested them, despite the fact Kenya's new constitution allows peaceful demonstrations. Charles Owino, a police spokesman, said police dispersed the protesters because the demonstration was illegal. East Africa has been hard hit by drought a rising food prices. (AP, July 7)

The US has brought Somali terror suspect Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame to the US to face a civil trial in New York after holding him at sea for two months, the Obama administration disclosed July 5—immediately prompting harsh criticism from both civil libertarians and Republicans. Warsame was captured by US forces on April 19 in what prosecutors would identify only as somewhere "in the Gulf region." He was detained on a US Navy ship for interrogation until being sent to the US for trial this week. In an appearance July 5 at US District Court for the Southern District of New York, he pleaded not guilty to charges of providing material support to a terrorist group and conspiring to teach and demonstrate how to make explosives. The indictment charges Warsame with providing material support to the Somali insurgent group al-Shabaab and to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen. If convicted, he faces a mandatory life sentence.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaeda mastermind said to be behind the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was killed this week at a security checkpoint in Mogadishu, Somalia, by government troops who didn't immediately realize he was the most wanted man in East Africa, officials said June 11. Mohammed, a native of the Comoros Islands, was carrying sophisticated weapons, maps and other "operational materials," as well as tens of thousands of dollars when he was killed, Somali Information Minister Abdulkareem Jama said. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, then on a visit to Tanzania, called the killing a "significant blow to al-Qaeda, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa."

Somalia's Sufi group, the Ahlu Sunna Waljama (ASWJ), on June 2 announced it is boycotting a "consultative meeting" with the transitional government in Mogadishu next week. In an interview with Somalia's independent Shabelle Media Network, Sheikh Omar Sheikh Abdulkadir, a spokesman for the group, said they would not attend the meeting because they were not invited, and predicted it would be fruitless. The consultative meeting is intended to broker peace among Somalia's political and regional factions. Thousands of families have been displaced in recent weeks of fighting between the Ahlu Sunna and the fundamentalist Shabab insurgents in the central Galgadud region (see map). Dusamareb, the regional capital, has changed hands repeatedly in the fighting, prompting an exodus of the town's residents. Drought conditions in the countryside have worsened the plight of the displaced.

Seven people were killed May 16 at Barrick Gold's North Mara mine in Tanzania after more than 1,000 people, desperate to find leftover scraps of gold, invaded the mine site. Following the the fatal confrontation, police reportedly stormed a local mortuary and seized the bodies of four of the dead. They also arrested and charged two members of Parliament, a legal adviser, and journalists for "instigating people to cause violence." The deadly clash is the latest in an ongoing battle between the giant Canadian miner and locals who scavenge for gold-laced rocks on the lucrative property, which Barrick acquired in 2006. Many of the "criminal intruders," as Barrick called them, were displaced artisanal miners, armed with pick-axes and machetes. Since the confrontation, tensions have been high in the Tarime district, which has been flooded with security forces.

Ethiopia's Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels issued a statement May 19 charging that the army has opened an offensive that is targetting civilians in the ethnically Somali region in the country's east (see map). ONLF spokesman Abdirahman Mahdi accused Ethiopian security forces of attacking villages near oil exploration sites in the Ogaden, which borders Somalia and has been the scene of a low-level insurgency since the early 1990s. "It is a random killing aimed at terrorizing the public," Mahdi said from his office in London. "This is the first time security forces turned up in villages, rounded up villagers and killed them in brutal manners." The statement called the attacks, centered around the towns of Nogob (Fik, by its official Ethiopian designation) and Jarar (Degahbur), a "pogrom," with at least 100 dead in recent days, and demanded an immediate UN investigation. Mohamed Gure, information minister for the Somali state government, called the claims "baseless propaganda." (AP, Ogaden Online, May 19)

South Sudan is witnessing a sharp rise in armed conflict—with less than three months to go before the formal independence of the fledgling nation. Heavy fighting has killed some 1,000 and displaced an estimated 100,000 since southerners voted overwhelmingly for independence in January, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The fighting is centered in Unity and Jonglei states, near the border with the North (see map). The most recent clashes have pitted the southern armed forces of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) against a breakaway SPLA faction led by Peter Gadet, who has taken up arms against the South Sudan government. (Reuters, May 11; IRIN, April 26)