NAIROBI — Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Wednesday called for the nation to come together to stop religious violence, after two days of deadly rioting sparked by the killing of a radical cleric.
"We are not going to allow outside forces to incite Kenyans to create religious war," Odinga said after flying to the port city of Mombasa, where four people died in street battles that broke out on Monday.
Police said Wednesday morning that they had restored calm to the town, after hundreds of angry youths fought running battles with the police -- looting churches, torching cars and attacking a police truck with a grenade -- following the assassination of preacher Aboud Rogo Mohammed.
The cleric -- popularly known as Rogo -- was on US and UN sanctions lists for allegedly supporting neighbouring Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militants.
Police said two officers wounded in the grenade attack Tuesday had died overnight, taking the toll of those killed in the blast to three.
Over a dozen other officers were wounded in the attack. One person was also hacked to death in the riots on Monday.
"We have many political enemies but we want to see coexistence among all the communities living in Mombasa," Odinga said, after meeting with religious leaders in the majority-Muslim town, which also has a significant Christian population.
Rogo had fiercely opposed Kenya's invasion of southern Somalia last year to attack Shebab bases. The US and UN had accused him of recruiting and fundraising for the extremist insurgents.
Police said Wednesday that although they had restored control to Mombasa -- a key port for the wider east Africa region and a major tourist hub -- tensions remained high.
"We do not have any problems this morning.... Even public transport is back to normal business, and shops have been opened," regional police chief Aggrey Adoli said. "We have made adequate deployment for street patrols to maintain peace."
An AFP reporter said police were conducting house-to-house searches looking for suspects, as well as for guns and other weapons.
Foreign embassies -- including those of Australia, Britain, France and the US -- have issued travel warnings for Mombasa, where several large tourist resorts are based.
Rogo was killed Monday in Mombasa when unidentified gunmen opened fire on his vehicle as he was driving with his wife and children, leaving it riddled with bullets.
Images released by his supporters showed his bloody corpse slumped behind the wheel. His wife and children reportedly survived the attack.
Human Rights Watch has called for a probe into the killing, noting it "follows the abductions and deaths earlier this year of several other people charged with recruitment and other offences related to the Shebab."
Rogo's supporters accused the security forces of murdering him, calling his death an "extra-judicial killing". The police reject the claim and have appealed for help in hunting down those responsible.
The Supreme Council of Muslims in Kenya condemned both the killing of Rogo and the subsequent violence, especially the targeting of churches.
However, Somalia's extremist Shebab called on Kenyan Muslims to "take all necessary measures" to defend their religion.
"Muslims must take the matter into their own hands, stand united against the kuffar (non-Muslims) and take all necessary measures to protect their religion, their honour, their property and their lives from the enemies of Islam," the group said in a statement on Tuesday.
President Mwai Kibaki had been due to travel to Mombasa on Wednesday to launch a new navy ship, but cancelled his trip to attend
NEW DELHI--India's Supreme Court on Wednesday confirmed the death sentence of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the only surviving gunman of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which left 166 people dead.
"I am very satisfied with the verdict," special prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told reporters in Mumbai after the hearing.
A Mumbai court had earlier found Mr. Kasab, now 25 years old, guilty of charges including terrorism, murder and waging war against India for his role in the November 2008 attacks. Last year, Mr. Kasab, who is Pakistani, had appealed against the sentence.
Mr. Kasab was among 10 Pakistanis who orchestrated a three-day siege on India's financial capital, derailing peace talks between New Delhi and Islamabad.
India has been pushing Pakistan to move ahead with the trials of seven militants who have been charged for their involvement in the attacks.
Mr. Nikam called on Pakistan to speed this up: "If Pakistan wants to put an end to terrorism, then it has to expedite the process of nabbing Kasab's masters."
The judgement was hailed by many in India, a country where the death penalty is handed down extremely rarely.
"We all are proud of the judiciary system of India, at last we got justice" said sub-inspector Kiran V. Bhosle, one of the police officers who countered the attack of Mr. Kasab and of another gunmen on a Mumbai railway station, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
"I bow to the verdict of the court," said Raju Ramachandran, a court-appointed lawyer for Mr. Kasab. "However grave the charges against him are, I'm happy that I was given a full hearing," added Mr. Ramachandran, who will no longer be advising Mr. Kasab.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will hold talks with Chinese officials when she visits Beijing next week. Her visit follows disagreements between the two countries over the handling of a South China Sea territorial dispute.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry says Clinton will be in China Sept. 4-5.
The United States said two weeks ago that China should not use bilateral talks to attempt to "divide and conquer" nations with competing territorial claims. That was after Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi visited Malaysia and Brunei, two such countries.
Earlier this month, the State Department criticized China's establishment of a municipality and military garrison in the contested sea as risking an escalation in tensions.
China has long said it wants to handle disputes over its claims bilaterally, rather than multilaterally.
Odinga says attempt to create division between Christians, Muslims
* Five people killed in two days of rioting
* Rioters set fire to at least six churches
By Richard Lough and Joseph Akwiri
MOMBASA, Kenya Aug 29 (Reuters) - Kenya's prime minister said on Wednesday the country's enemies were behind the killing of a Muslim cleric that triggered riots he described as being conducted by an "underground organisation" to create divisions between Christians and Muslims.
Aboud Rogo, accused by the United States of helping al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants in Somalia, was facing charges in a Kenyan court of possessing weapons when he was shot in his car by unknown attackers in Mombasa on Monday.
His death unleashed two days of riots in which five people, including three police officers, were killed.
A measure of calm has returned to Kenya's second-biggest city, a tourist hub and major Indian Ocean port, as anti-riot police armed with wooden batons, teargas and automatic rifles patrolled its busy streets.
"We suspect the hand of the enemies of our country in this, those who want to create religious animosity," Prime Minister Raila Odinga told reporters after addressing religious leaders in the city.
"It is an attempt to try create a division between Christians and Muslims in our country so that it appears it is a religious war."
He said Kenya had many enemies, including abroad, after it sent troops into neighbouring Somalia last October to fight Islamist militants.
Asked whether the violent reaction in the streets of Mombasa, which has a big Muslim minority, was organised or just a spontaneous outpouring of anger the prime minister said: "Certainly, that is what it looks like."
"Why deliberately attack churches? That must be part of an organised (reaction). Where did the grenades come from? It confirms our suspicions that there is a serious underground organisation conducting this," he said.
Rioters set fire to at least six churches, stoking fears that the unrest may become more sectarian in a city where grenade attacks blamed on Somali militants and their sympathisers have already strained Muslim-Christian relations.
CHURCHES BURNT
The National Council of Churches of Kenya, said in a statement it had followed with "growing trepidation" the increasing attacks on Christians and churches.
"The violence appears well planed, pre-meditated, and systematic. In the last five months alone, 11 churches have been attacked while attempts were made on others," the group's general-secretary, Peter Karanja, said.
"Christians have been killed, injured or maimed for life. We see this as an intentional provocation of Christians to retaliate."
On Tuesday, mobs of youths fired machineguns at police in Kisauni, a predominantly Muslim area, just before throwing a grenade into a police truck, police said. Two Kenyan police officers and a civilian were killed instantly.
One more police officer died on Wednesday of wounds inflicted in the grenade blast. One person was killed when the riots broke out on Monday.
Some 24 people arrested during the riots were charged in a Mombasa court On Wednesday for assembling illegally and they were remanded in custody for five days.
Police said they were likely to add more charges of arson and destruction of property.
Residents, however, accused the police of being heavy-handed, especially in Majengo, another neighbourhood with a large Muslim population that had been one of the flashpoints of violence. Locals were ordered by police to stay in their houses.
"It is getting better, but police should stop intimidating people. I closed my shop the whole of yesterday. Today am open but still very careful. I hear any noise I close immediately," said Margaret Mumo, owner of a chemist shop at Sabasaba, near Majengo.
環境省は２８日、絶滅の恐れのある国内の野生生物を、絶滅の危険度ごとに分類したレッドリストの改訂版をまとめ、哺乳類のニホンカワウソを「絶滅」に指定した。
リストが公表された１９９１年以降、哺乳類が絶滅に追加指定されたのは初めて。また、二枚貝のハマグリが新たに「絶滅危惧２類」（絶滅の危険が増大）に指定された。
新リストに掲載された野生生物は改訂前より４１９種増えて、３４３０種（見直し作業中の魚類を除く）となり、このうち８種は新たに「絶滅」とされた。
絶滅に次ぐ「野生絶滅」に指定されているトキは、１ランク下の「絶滅危惧１Ａ類」（ごく近い将来の絶滅危険性が極めて高い）に変更するかどうか検討されたが、「自然界での繁殖が５年以上続く必要がある」とされ、据え置かれた。
ニホンカワウソは、川の近くに生息する体長１メートル前後のイタチ科の哺乳類。毛皮目的の乱獲などで急減し、高知県で１９７９年に目撃されたのを 最後に生息情報が途絶えていた。「絶滅危惧１Ａ類」だったが、環境省は「中型哺乳類が人目に付かないまま、これほど長期間生息し続けているとは考えにく い」と判断した。