Ebola spreads exponentially in Liberia, many more cases soon: WHO

Health workers wearing protective clothing prepare themselves before to carrying an abandoned dead body presenting with Ebola symptoms at Duwala market in Monrovia August 17, 2014.

Liberia, the country worst hit by West Africa's Ebola epidemic, should see thousands of new cases in coming weeks as the virus spreads exponentially, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

The epidemic, the worst since the disease was discovered in 1976, has killed some 2,100 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria and has also spread to Senegal.

The WHO believes it will take six to nine months to contain and may infect up to 20,000 people. In Liberia, the disease has already killed 1,089 people - more than half of all deaths reported since March in this regional epidemic.

Battle for Benghazi could break up Libya

Pro-government Libyan forces, already reeling from the fall of the capital, are fighting to prevent Islamist militants from seizing the eastern city of Benghazi and splitting the North African country into three warring parts.

Three weeks after losing Tripoli to a different militia, the army now faces an offensive in Libya's second-largest city from the Islamists of Ansar al-Sharia, which has overrun special forces bases and is attacking Benghazi airport.

Losing the port city would not only leave the government looking impotent and irrelevant. It would also increase the risk of the country crumbling into de facto autonomous regions: the militants demand Islamist rule, while other armed groups want greater powers for the eastern region they call by its ancient name of Cyrenaica.

Somalia to probe rape charges against African Union troops

Somali authorities said on Tuesday they would investigate charges that women and girls in the capital Mogadishu had been raped by African peacekeepers, a principal source of security in the war-torn country.

A report released on Monday by the group Human Rights Watch documented the rape or sexual exploitation of 21 women and girls, all of them displaced from their homes, at peacekeeping bases run by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).

In some cases, the females entered the bases through official gates to request medicine and water, and were taken to areas where they were then abused by a Somali intermediary, according to the New York-based rights group.

Kenya holds two Germans suspected of Somali Islamist link: police

Kenyan authorities have detained two German nationals who they accuse of being members of the Somali Islamist group al Shabaab, which has been blamed for a series of attacks on Kenyan soil, police said Tuesday.

"We arrested the two foreigners following information that they had traveled to Somalia and joined the militant group fighting the government," John Mulaulu, Kenya's acting head of Anti Terrorism Police Unit, told Reuters by telephone

"The two were arrested on Aug. 29 within the Kenyan capital, Nairobi when they arrived from Somalia," he said, adding that both men were German.

Somali militants threaten U.S. attacks to avenge leader's death

 Somali Islamist militants have threatened attacks in east Africa and the United States, warning President Barack Obama he would hear "shocking news" as punishment for a U.S. missile strike that killed the rebel group's leader last week.

Al Shabaab made the threats late on Monday, hours after launching twin attacks inside Somalia against African peacekeepers and a government convoy. The death toll from those bombings rose to at least 18 on Tuesday, police said.

"Let our mujahideen (fighters) wait for good news. And let Obama wait for shocking news," senior al Shabaab official, Fuad Mohamed Khalaf Shongole, said in a recorded message, promising to avenge the death of Ahmed Godane in a U.S. raid on Sept. 1.