BBC news with John Jason
Tens of thousands of Kenyans have fled their homes after President Mwai Kibaki's controversial re-election led to the worst outbreak of violence the country has seen in years. Some 250 people have been killed so far. The worst incident took place in the western town of Eldoret where at least 30 people were burnt to death in a church. One of the pastors at the church, Jackson Nyanga has been at the hospital with the injured.
After attacking the place, they beat the people who are there. And after beating the people who are there, they torched the church. After torching the church, children died, around 25 in number, four elderly people. And our men and our people who tried to confront them were injured.
Aid agencies have warned that if the killings don't stop, the country is heading towards a humanitarian catastrophe. The pressure is growing on the Kenyan government both inside and outside the country to accept an international review of the disputed election. The African Union says its chairman, President John Kufuor of Ghana and a high-level delegation are planning to visit Kenya on Wednesday, to try to help resolve the crisis. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the former colonial power Britain said he's spoken to both sides in Kenya about ending the violence and starting a process of reconciliation.
A suicide bomber has killed 30 people and injured 38 in an attack on a funeral in Baghdad. Police in the city say the bomber approached a group of mourners at the funeral of a Shiite former army officer, before detonating an explosive vest. The attack came as new figures from the Iraqi Interior Ministry said that three-quarters of Al-Qaeda networks have been destroyed and that there was a dramatic drop in civilian casualties in 2007. From baghdad, Joseph Winter reports.
It is perhaps a measure of how bad things have been in Iraq that casualty figures of 500 civilian deaths a month are seen as a measure of progress. But at the end of 2006, 1900 Iraqi civilians were being killed in the same period. The drop is dramatic, but still means that more than 60,000 Iraqi civilians died violently last year. Other sources have even higher tallies. Tuesday's bombing of a funeral is a reminder that attacks are still regular and deadly.
A United States diplomat who was wounded when shots were fired at his car in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in the early hours of Tuesday has died. His Sudanese driver was also killed in the attack. Our African editor Martin Plaut has this report.
Police in Khartoum say the diplomat was John Michael Granville who worked for the United States Agency for International Development. The attack took place as he was being driven home after a New Year party. A vehicle carrying the gunmen cut off the car he was traveling in. They opened fire, killing his driver and hitting Mr. Granville in the neck and chest. He was taken to hospital in a critical condition and later died of his injuries.
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A member of the Palestinian Hamas Movement has been killed and five others have been injured by Israeli tank fire in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army says soldiers opened fire after seeing gunmen approach the border fence with Israel. Earlier there were more clashes between rival Palestinian factions in Gaza. At least eight people were reported to have been killed, including two civilians.
Pakistan's election commission says it appears impossible that elections will be held on schedule in a week's time, because plans have been thrown into disarray by the violent protest surrounding the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. But it says it'll consult political parties before making a final decision on Wednesday. The main opposition party say any delay will help President Pervez Musharraf's party, the PMLQ. But a senior member of the PMLQ, Ijazul Haq, told the BBC that his party also wanted the elections to take place on the planned date.
The Prime Minister or the President should call a meeting or an all parties' conference of all the political parties, sit down with them and come up with a consensus. Because I think elections should be held on time. Or if they are delayed, there should be a justification, either from the election commission or from the government, particularly regarding the law and order situation, security situation.
Opposition politicians in Sri Lanka have accused the government of being partly responsible for the murder of a prominent Tamil member of parliament in the capital Colombo. The MP T. Maheswaran, a former minister was killed inside a Hindu temple by a lone gunman mingling with worshippers.
The Malaysian Health Minister Chua Soi Lek has admitted that he is the man featured in a widely circulated pornographic video of a couple, and that the woman in it is a friend, although Mr. Chua said he had no part in recording the two DVDs in question, which one newspaper said were taken from close circuit recordings in a hotel room.
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