Nairobi  - A prominent Islamist opposition leader Friday called on African Union peacekeepers to leave Somalia before he would consider joining a coalition government.

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys returned to Somalia on Thursday after two years in exile, raising hopes the conflict-hit African nation's new government could succeed in restoring a semblance of order.

He returned home as donors pledged 213 million dollars to support the AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia and boost the police force and judiciary.

Nairobi  - The jeep bumps along a dusty track, its occupants peering out into the long grass, studded with the occasional Acacia tree, that carpets the open plain as far as the eye can see.

Scores of wildebeest, zebra and impala feed contentedly across the plain as the sun reaches the end of its long trek down the sky.

Suddenly a finger points and the jeep shudders to a halt. There, emerging from the grass, comes a solitary lioness.

Nairobi -Malaria is a vector-borne, infectious parasitic disease transmitted from human to human by mosquitoes. It is the leading killer of children under five and infants in Africa. According to the World Health Organization's latest figures, an estimated 247 million cases of malaria worldwide led to nearly 881,000 deaths in 2006.

Some 91 per cent of those deaths were in Africa and 85 per cent of the deaths were children under the age of five. This is equivalent to 2,051 children dying each day.

Nairobi - A French warship delivered 11 Somalis accused of piracy to the Kenyan port of Mombasa on Wednesday as the trial of another nine suspected pirates apprehended by the German navy got underway in the town.

French commandos from the warships Nivose captured the men last week as they attempted to board the Liberian tanker Safmarine Asia in the Indian Ocean.

The men delivered by the Nivose were immediately taken away by the police and are expected to appear in court on Thursday.

Nairobi - Somali pirates have released a Togo-flagged ship originally routed to carry food aid to the Horn of Africa nation, the World Food Programme (WFP) said Monday.

A Nairobi-based WFP spokesman, citing the MV Sea Horse's owners, said that the ship, which was taken on April 14, was released on Friday.

There was no official information on whether a ransom was paid, although some reports suggested that as much as 100,000 dollars may have changed hands.

Nairobi/Mogadishu  - Two foreign aid workers employed by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) have been kidnapped by gunmen in Somalia, reports said Sunday.

The African news media network Shabelle. net, quoting witnesses, said the pair were taken on the way to Hudur, the capital of the Bakol region in south-west Somalia.

The BBC's Somali service said the two men, employees of MSF Belgium, were Danish and Belgian.

A bloody insurgency is ongoing in Somalia, where militant Islamist group al-Shabaab is fighting the western-backed government.