Kenya’s police chief has quit following criticism over dozens of deaths during anti-government protests, the latest head to roll as President William Ruto struggles to contain the worst crisis of his nearly two-year rule.

Ruto has “accepted the resignation” of Inspector General of Police Japhet Koome, who has served in the role since November 2022, the presidency said, adding his deputy Douglas Kanja has been named acting chief.

The announcement came a day after Ruto sacked almost his entire cabinet in the face of widespread public anger at his government after largely peaceful demonstrations over proposed tax hikes descended into deadly mayhem.

The attorney-general and all cabinet ministers, with the exception of Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi and Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, were axed.

Some of the young Gen-Z Kenyans behind the demonstrations had called for Koome to go, with police accused by rights groups of using excessive force, and reports of abductions of some protesters.

IT specialist Cyrus Otieno, 27, said Koome “must be prosecuted for police brutality”.

“Someone must be held accountable.”

Ruto, who took office in September 2022, has taken a series of measures seeking to placate the demonstrators, including abandoning the finance bill that contained the deeply unpopular tax increases.

– ‘Wasted two years’ –

But the cabinet announcement, while welcomed by some, did not appease some young Kenyans frustrated with Ruto’s failure to deliver on his 2022 election promises to create jobs and boost their fortunes.

“We will be back on the streets until Ruto goes. He has wasted two years in office travelling and telling lies,” said Hyrence Mwangi, 25.

Initially peaceful, the protests sharply escalated when police fired at crowds who stormed parliament on June 25, ransacking the partly ablaze complex.

While large-scale street action has subsided, anger against the government has not, particularly towards the police, with rights groups saying that 39 people were killed in the demonstrations and more than 360 injured.

“When we first went to the streets, Ruto dismissed us as a bunch of hired goons and criminals, only to come later and start saying he will make changes,” said 27-year-old Jackson Rotich. “We can’t trust him.”

Law student Melisa Agufana, 24, welcomed the cabinet dismissal, saying she wanted to “thank the president for listening”.

She added that ministers had “wasted two years doing nothing apart from being driven around with our national flag”.

– Fresh start –

Analysts said the cabinet move offered the possibility of a fresh start, but warned of further risks.

“The challenge that Ruto now faces is forming a new cabinet that includes various vested interests, whilst simultaneously calming popular anger in the face of an explicitly leaderless movement,” Gabrielle Lynch, professor of comparative politics at the University of Warwick, told AFP.

Last week, Ruto announced sharp cuts to government spending, including travel and refurbishment costs, and said he would increase borrowing to pay for some services even as Kenya grapples with massive foreign debt of about $78 billion or about 70 percent of GDP.

The crisis led US-based Moody’s to downgrade Kenya’s debt rating further into junk territory, warning of a negative outlook, which will make borrowing even more expensive for the cash-strapped government.

Ruto said Thursday that he would “immediately engage in extensive consultations across different sectors and political formations, with the aim of setting up a broad-based government”, without elaborating.

Media reports this week have been filled with speculation of a “national unity” government, possibly including the coalition headed by Raila Odinga, the veteran opposition leader defeated by Ruto in the 2022 vote.

Kenyan police said they have launched an investigation after the mutilated bodies of six women were found on Friday in piles of garbage at a dump site in a Nairobi slum.

Police briefly fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse an angry crowd at a police station near the site of the grisly discovery in Mukuru, in the south of the capital, an AFP journalist said.

“The alarm was raised following the discovery of six severely mutilated bodies, all female, in various stages of decomposition,” the Directorate of Criminal Investigations said in a statement.

“The bodies were wrapped in nylon papers and reinforced with nylon ropes.”

Witnesses had earlier reported the bodies of nine men and women had been found.

Homicide detectives and forensic officers were at the scene, an abandoned quarry that was filled with water and used as a dumping ground for rubbish.

“We need answers from police because this is something that needs to be investigated very fast,” said Lucy Njambi, who lives in Mukuru.

“It is shocking what I have seen. Bodies stashed in sacks and dumped at the dump site.”

The DCI said preliminary investigations suggested all the victims had been killed in the same manner, without elaborating.

The bodies have been taken to the city mortuary to await postmortem examinations, it added.

Sudanese security authorities have ordered all foreigners to leave the capital Khartoum and the surrounding region.

They have two weeks to do so, according to a statement from the section of the police dealing with foreigners.

Foreigners should leave for their own safety amid the fighting still raging between government troops and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, the police said.

According to media reports, hostility towards foreigners, especially those from other African countries, has been on the rise following reports of foreign mercenaries in the RSF ranks.

Just a few days ago, more than 150 foreigners who did not have valid residence papers were detained.

A bloody power struggle has been raging in Sudan for more than a year between de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.

According to the UN, the conflict has caused almost 10 million people to flee their homes and risks a famine in the country.

International aid organisation staff and diplomats still in the country left Khartoum after the outbreak of fighting and are now working from Port Sudan, where the situation is comparatively stable.

A Spanish tourist was trampled to death by an elephant after stepping out of his vehicle to take photos of a small breeding herd at a renowned South African park, authorities said Tuesday.

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The 43-year-old man was attacked on Sunday at the Pilanesberg National Park, a tourist magnet about 200 kilometres (120 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, according to park officials.

The man, his fiancee and two women were driving their vehicle within the reserve when they spotted three elephants and three calves, police said.

“Reports suggest that the man stopped the vehicle, alighted and went closer to the elephants to take pictures,” police spokesman Sabata Mokgwabone said.

North West province’s Parks and Tourism Board (NWPTB), which manages Pilanesberg, said an adult female elephant then charged at the man.

“He was unfortunately not able to escape or evade the elephant, which was now joined by the whole herd, and was caught and trampled to death,” it said.

“The elephants moved away immediately from the scene without any aggression towards the nearby vehicles and eventually disappeared into the bushes.”

Pieter Nel, NWPTB’s chief conservation officer, said the matriarch of the herd attacked upon becoming “agitated” after seeing the tourist approach.

It is normal behaviour for elephants to try to “defend the young ones”, he added.

“Lots of tourists are oblivious to the dangers and do not realise how dangerous these animals can be,” he told AFP.

Nel and Mokgwabone said the man was from Spain.

His companions, all from Johannesburg, were unharmed, the police said, adding they had opened an investigation.

Elephant attacks are not uncommon in the region. In 2021 a suspected poacher was killed by elephants in South Africa’s world-famous Kruger National Park.

And last year 50 people were killed and 85 injured by wild animals — mostly elephants — in neighbouring Zimbabwe, according to local authorities.

Pilanesberg and other South African parks tell visitors driving through the reserves to keep the windows closed and not to disembark from their vehicles.

“The dangerous and unpredictable nature of wild animals are always emphasised on the permits and booklets for sale in Pilanesberg,” NWPTB said, adding it was saddened by the “tragic incident”.

The leader of a Kenyan doomsday cult went on trial on Monday on charges of terrorism over the deaths of more than 400 of his followers in a macabre case that shocked the world.

Self-proclaimed pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie appeared in court in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa along with 94 co-defendants, an AFP journalist said.

Journalists were removed from the courtroom shortly after the start of the hearing to enable a protected witness to take the stand.

Mackenzie, who was arrested in April last year, is alleged to have incited his acolytes to starve to death in order to “meet Jesus”.

He and his co-accused all pleaded not guilty to the charges of terrorism at a hearing in January.

They also face charges of murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, and child torture and cruelty in separate cases.

The remains of more than 440 people have been unearthed so far in a remote wilderness inland from the Indian Ocean coastal town of Malindi, in a case that has been dubbed the “Shakahola forest massacre”.

Autopsies have found that while starvation appeared to be the main cause of death, some of the victims — including children — were strangled, beaten, or suffocated.Previous court documents also said that some of the bodies had had their organs removed.

– Police accused of laxity –

Mackenzie, a former taxi driver, turned himself in on April 14 after police acting on a tip-off first entered Shakahola forest, where mass graves have been found.

In March, the authorities began releasing some victims’ bodies to distraught relatives after months of painstaking work to identify them using DNA.

Questions have been raised about how Mackenzie, a self-styled pastor with a history of extremism, managed to evade law enforcement despite his prominent profile and previous legal cases.

Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki last year accused Kenyan police of laxity in investigating the initial reports of starvation.”

The Shakahola massacre is the worst breach of security in the history of our country,” he told a senate committee hearing, vowing to “relentlessly push for legal reforms to tame rogue preachers”.

The state-backed Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) in March criticised security officers in Malindi for “gross abdication of duty and negligence”.

The horrific saga has seen President William Ruto vow to intervene in Kenya’s homegrown religious movements.In largely Christian Kenya, it has also thrown a spotlight on failed efforts to regulate unscrupulous churches and cults that have dabbled in criminality.

Two Congolese soldiers were sentenced to death Friday for “cowardice” and “fleeing the enemy,” two days after a similar sentence was handed down to 25 soldiers in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to an AFP journalist.

The trials are taking place as M23 rebels, which Kinshasha accuses Rwanda of backing, last week seized new terrain on the northern front of the conflict that has been ongoing for two and a half years in the North Kivu province. Kigali denies backing the M23 rebels.

Since the end of 2021, rebels have conquered vast swathes of territory in the province, nearly completely encircling the provincial capital of Goma.

The hearings have a “deterrent and educational” character, Captain Melissa Kahambu Muhasa, representing the public prosecutor, told AFP.

They aim to put off soldiers from abandoning their posts on the front lines, she said.

Public hearings were staged Thursday by the Butembo garrison military court in the town of Lubero, some 70 kilometres (43 miles) away from the city.

Some 30 soldiers including at least three captains were tried for “cowardice”, “fleeing the enemy”, “dissipation of war munitions”, and “violating orders”, murder, theft, looting or extortion.

The court on Friday delivered two death sentences, to a second-class soldier and a corporal.

It will review the cases of the other defendants on Saturday.

The defence condemned the sentencing, announcing its intention to appeal, as it had on Wednesday when 25 soldiers received death sentences at a trial in the village of Alimbongo.

In early May, eight soldiers in Goma were also sentenced to death for “fleeing the enemy”.

Last March, the Congolese government lifted the moratorium on the death penalty which had been in force since 2003 in the country.

The measure in particular targeted soldiers accused of treason, at a time when the east of the country is in the grip of an armed rebellion.