Nairobi/Khartoum- A Sudanese aid worker employed by a Canadian agency has been shot dead in Sudan's restive Darfur province, the agency's country director said Tuesday.

Mark Simmons, Sudan director for The Fellowship of African Relief (FAR), said that gunmen first ambushed Adam Khatir, 39, on Saturday night in the town of Kongo Haraza to demand his satellite phone.

This attempt failed, but they came to Khatir's home on Monday evening to try again.

Nairobi/Conakry- Guinea's military junta has arrested three former ministers, including a former prime minister, reports said Tuesday.

Ahmed Tidiane Souare, who was prime minister when the military took over in December, and two former mine ministers have been detained, unnamed sources told the BBC.

Captain Moussa Dadis Camara seized power at the end of December following the death of strongman president Lansana Conte, who had been in power since 1984.

Nairobi - Tens of thousands of animals were at risk in Kenya on Monday after forest fires sent wildlife fleeing and dried up water sources in a country already suffering from drought.

A fire at Mount Longonot, an extinct volcano popular with hikers, continued to burn on Monday, with game wardens concerned that animals such as baboons, rabbits and mongoose were trapped inside the crater of the extinct volcano.

Nairobi/Khartoum - They distribute food and medicine, nurse starving children back to health, help traumatized children and raped women to cope with their experiences.

In the eyes of Sudan's government, however, many of the relief agencies that have been working in the embattled western Sudanese province of Darfur are a fifth column - informers for Western governments and the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which on Wednesday issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes in Darfur.

Nairobi/Mogaishu  - Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed spoke in favour of using Islamic sharia law as the basis by which he will govern the Horn of Africa nation, local media reported Sunday.

The moderate Islamist leader who was elected president a month ago just hours during a parliamentary session held in neighbouring Djibouti said he was hoping that the introduction of shariah law would defuse the country's conflict with tribal militias.

Nairobi/Bamako - Extremist group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has claimed responsibility for kidnapping four European tourists at the end of January in Mali, a group which monitors extremist websites said.

US-based SITE Intelligence carried pictures of the four - one German, two Swiss and a Briton - on its website, saying the pictures came from AQIM.

The three pictures show the four haggard tourists squatting in the desert with masked gunmen lined up behind them.

AQIM said it was also holding two Canadian diplomats taken several months earlier.