BBC news with Neil Nunes
Hundreds of police and soldiers have been deployed across Kenya where violence which followed the reelection of President Mwai Kibaki has left at least 135 people dead. Plumes of black smoke have been seen, rising above the slums of Nairobi where police clashed with protestors who set fire to buildings. In the country’s third largest city Kisumu, more than 40 people are reported to have been shot dead. Karen Allen in Nairobi has the latest.
In the west of the country, hundreds of people have fled fighting. There’s been violence too in Mombasa at the coast. In the capital Nairobi, police fired tear gas and live rounds at protestors wielding crude weapons in its largest slum area Kibera. Diplomats have hardened their position to the chaos in Kenya, the British government adding its to European Union election observers, who expressed grave concerns about the result. Four members of Kenya’s Electoral Commission , the body accused of helping to rig the presidential race, have spoken out, suggesting inaccuracies in the vote tallying process should be independently investigated.
The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has telephoned both President Mwai Kibaki and the opposition challenger Raila Odinga, to try to encourage dialogue between them and to end the bloodshed. Bridget Kendall has the details.
The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been on the phone to both the leader who claimed a reelection victory on Sunday, Mwai Kibaki and the opposition challenger Raila Odinga, who says it was stolen from him. The aim---to get the two men talking to thrash out some sort of political compromise were a part of a much wider international effort to try to end the bloodshed and save Kenya from sinking into political chaos.
The United States has urged Pakistan to go ahead with next week's parliamentary elections, amid concerns that the poll could be delayed. Pakistan’s election commission is due to announce on Tuesday whether election should be postponed, because of the violence which followed the assassination of the main opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto. A US State Department Spokesman said Washington wanted elections to go ahead as planned, if they could be held in a safe and secure way. Both of Pakistan’s main opposition parties have also called for the poll to be held on schedule.
Left wing rebels in Colombia have suspended a high-profile plan to release 3 hostages, accusing the Colombian government of sabotaging the deal. Jeremy McDermott has this report from Colombia.
The FARC in a letter to President Chavez said that they can’t release the hostages as planned, because of army operations that they insist threaten the lives Clara Rojas, her son Emanuel and the former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez whom the guerillas have promised to liberate. But Colombian president Aacute lvaro Uribe Vélez said that there are no new military operations and that the FARC are lying. He’s offered to create a strategic corridor free of troops to allow the FARC to move the hostages.
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In Gaza, three people have been killed in clashes between the rival Fatah and Hamas factions. Medical workers said a Fatah supporter and two Hamas members are shot dead in the town of Khan Younis in the Southern Gaza Strip. Earlier the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for a new page to be opened in relations between his Fatah party and the rival Hamas movement, which controls Gaza.
A human rights group in Somalia says more than 6 500 residents of Mogadishu have been killed in the conflict there in the past year. The Elman peace and human rights organization said thousands of more had been injured and 1.5 million uprooted from their homes. The group’s chairman Sudan Ali Ahmed blamed Ethiopian forces supporting the interim Somali government for many of the deaths. He said he believed the United States was funding Ethiopia to keep its troops in Somalia and should take some of the blame.
Millions of people across Asia and Europe have been celebrating the New Year, with one of the most exuberant parties in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Residents surge into the streets in their thousands, playing drums, dancing and firing gunshots into the sky. Revelers said they felt safer on the streets than they had since before the American-led invasion of Iraq. The Australian city of Sydney brought in 2008 with a huge firework display, but in the Belgian capital Brussels, the fireworks were cancelled for security reasons.
Widespread bans on smoking in public have come into force in France and most of Germany. Anyone caught smoking in bars, cafes and restaurants in France now faces a 100 dollar fine. Smoking in offices, shops and other public places is already prohibited. The BBC Paris correspondent says that while such a ban would have been unthinkable recently, there is now widespread acceptance.
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