http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/08/02/southafrica.attack.reut/index.htmlJOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- Attackers hacked off a South African boy's hand, ear and genitals and left him for dead in what police said could be part of the "muti" trade in body parts for witchcraft.
Sello Chokoe, 10, was in critical condition in a hospital Monday after he was attacked near the village of GaMaleka in South Africa's rural northern province of Limpopo.
Chokoe was searching for cattle in nearby mountains Friday when he was attacked, hit on the head with a blunt weapon and left for dead, said police spokesman Mohale Ramatseba.
A woman collecting firewood found him after hearing his faint cry for help.
"The motive has not been established but we don't rule out the prospect that it could be 'muti'-related," Ramatseba said.
He said several similar crimes had happened in the area before and arrests were expected soon in the latest case after a flood of information from outraged locals.
"Muti" murders -- killings to obtain body parts for supposedly potent traditional cures -- still happen with alarming regularity in post-apartheid South Africa and often go unreported, police say.
Killings are often carried out to meet a specific order, police say. For example, a hand might be cut off to sell to a shopkeeper who would bury it under the shop door to entice customers' money
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (Reuters) -- A United Nations human rights team has found three mass graves with at least 99 bodies in Ivory Coast's northern rebel stronghold of Korhogo, the U.N. mission in the West African country said on Monday.
A U.N. spokesman in the main city Abidjan said the victims had been killed during clashes between rival factions on June 20-21. He said it was not clear whether civilians were among the dead.
"Some of these people were killed by bullets. According to reliable and consistent witness accounts, others died from suffocation," the U.N. mission said in a statement.
The June clashes followed what rebels said was a failed assassination attempt against the political leader of their movement, Guillaume Soro.
The rebels said at the time several fighters detained after an attack on Soro's convoy in Korhogo had disclosed that they backed Ibrahim Coulibaly, a Paris-based military chief rival to Soro. Coulibaly -- known as "IB" -- has denied any involvement.
London-based human rights group Amnesty International said it had received information indicating that dozens of people arrested by Soro's forces had been put in containers and died from suffocation.
Others appeared to have been decapitated or killed with their hands bound behind their back, it said in a statement.
The U.N. team which visited Korhogo said it was concerned about the people who were still in detention. A full report was due to be published soon.
"We have nothing to say for the moment, until the report comes out," rebel spokesman Sidiki Konate said.
Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, has been split in two since a civil war grew out of a failed coup in September 2002.
The conflict was declared over last year but progress towards peace has been slow and human rights groups say serious abuses and killings have continued in both the rebel-held north and government-controlled south.
Between the two sides are 4,000 French soldiers with another 6,240 peacekeepers being sent by the United Nations.
