African Briefs

Kenya grenade attack kills at least 3
MOMBASA – Officials in Kenya say the death toll from the country’s latest grenade attack has risen to three.

Police official, Aggrey Adoli, said yesterday that anti-terror police have taken one suspect into custody for the Sunday grenade and gunfire attack on a bar outside the coastal city of Mombasa. Adoli said there were three explosions and heavy gunfire during the attack.Kenya’s Red Cross confirmed that the death toll had risen to three overnight. Some 25 people were wounded.Police official, Elijah Rop, said one of the injured people being treated at the hospital is suspected of having taken part in the attack.Gaddafi loyalist till the endTRIPOLI – Baghdadi al-Mahmudi, who was extradited on Sunday from Tunisia to Libya, was loyal to Muammar Gaddafi until the end, serving as premier from 2006 up to the final days of his regime.A physician by training, Mahmudi arrived in a private plane to Tripoli, where he was immediately transferred to prison under orders of the Libyan prosecutor general.'[Mahmudi is] charged with committing crimes against the Libyan people,’ Libyan interim Prime Minister Abdel Rahim al-Kib told journalists.His extradition represents a major diplomatic victory for Libya’s interim government, which has been keen to prove to the world that it can conduct fair trials for ex-regime figures.Botswana must rehire civil servantsGABORONE – A court in Botswana has forced the state to reinstate 400 civil servants fired last year after the biggest strike in the southern African country’s history, a union official said on Friday.In a ruling delivered late on Thursday, judge Key Dingake also ordered the government to pay the workers back salaries amounting to 10 million pula ($1.26 million).’We are happy that as per the ruling, workers will be going back to work in 14 days,’ said Go­retetse Kekgonegile, the spokesman for the Botswana Federation of Public Sector Unions.In 2011, nearly 2 600 public service workers, including teachers, nurses and doctors, downed tools demanding a 16 per cent salary hike, the first time civil servants had gone on strike in Botswana.