Kenya, Syria, Somalia.

Today's three stories you should know.

Feb 06, 2024

Kenya

This story is unspeakable and I’m surprised it hasn’t been getting more prominent coverage in the international media. Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie was today charged with the murder of 191 children, whose bodies were among more than 400 exhumed in a forest last year. Mackenzie and his followers lived in seclusion in an 800-acre area in the country’s Shakahola forest, where Mackenzie banned people from sending children to school and ordered them not to seek medical treatment when they were ill. It is believed he told his followers to starve themselves and their children to death so that they could get into heaven before the world ended.

Syria

It’s one year today since a devastating earthquake rocked Turkey and Syria, killing almost 60,000 people, flattening entire villages and towns, and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. Events were held in Turkey to commemorate the anniversary with residents in the quake zone, angry at what they percieve as a lack of adequate help over the last year, jostling with police as officials arrived. There is anger, too, in war-torn Syria, where many feel the world turned its back on them after the disaster. A Syrian aid worker today wrote an affecting piece about that for Al Jazeera.

Somalia

At least 10 people are reported dead and more than 20 wounded after several blasts hit the biggest market in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu. The market, Bakara, is where most residents of the city buy food, clothes, medicine, electronics and other items. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the armed group al-Shabab, which has been battling the government for nearly 15 years, regularly carries out such attacks.