KENYA AUTHORITIES SEIZED HOARDED IVORY

Kenyan authorities have seized 300kg (660 lbs) of illegal ivory hidden in coffins on a plane bound for Laos. The haul included 16 elephant tusks and black rhinoceros horns. Officials said the blood on the ivory suggested the animals had been killed very recently.

The flight – which stopped in Nairobi – originated in Mozambique and was bound for Thailand and then Laos. The haul of ivory may have had a value of about $1m (£614,000). Officials from Kenya’s Wildlife Service said the ivory might have come from Tanzania or South Africa. The black rhino is found only in eastern and southern Africa. The international ivory trade has been banned since 1989. The sale of ivory is illegal if the ivory is not from pre-1989 stockpiles. However, some countries have done little to enforce the ban.

SOURCED FROM BBC

NIGERIA’S REBELS DECLARE EIGHT WEEKS OF CEASEFIRE

The main rebel group in Nigeria’s Niger Delta is to observe a 60-day ceasefire in its attacks on the oil industry. Mend – the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta – said the move was in response to the freeing of rebel leader, Henry Okah, on Monday.

Mr Okah was released from jail as part of a government amnesty; he’d been held for more than a year on charges including treason. The Mend ceasefire is set to come into effect from Wednesday, a statement said.

On Sunday, just hours before Henry Okah was freed, militants in speedboats attacked the main oil depot serving Lagos – well away from the usual area of operations in the Niger Delta. Mr Okah said he regarded that attack as a gesture, welcoming him to freedom. But he said the Niger Delta needed a kind of peace process. People there, he said, were fighting so that the government would recognise the poverty and injustice that exists.

Asked if he would favour a partial decommissioning of weapons, he said: “Yes, yes, I would. But the government must start attending to our problems.”

Numerous attacks by Mend on installations in the Niger Delta in recent years have seriously disrupted the Nigerian oil and gas industry. Mend says it is fighting for a fairer distribution of the wealth from Nigeria’s natural resources, but in the past the government has dismissed the militants as criminals.

In a bid to end the attacks, the government offered militants an amnesty three weeks ago. Officials said any rebel willing to give up weapons by October would benefit from a rehabilitation programme, including education and training opportunities. The government’s critics say the amnesty is unlikely to work because the unrest is not a straightforward political struggle.