A young albino girl, Esther Charles (9), was killed on Sunday night and her legs amputated by unidentified people in Kahama District, Shinyanga Region, in Tanzania, according to Shinyanga Regional Crimes Officer (RCO) Aggrey Lufutyo.
After he was informed, the RCO drove to the scene about 50 kilometres from Kahama town. Narrating the awful story on Monday, Segese Ward Councillor Joseph Bundala Mayala said the incident occurred on Sunday night.
Mayala explained that three people armed with machetes broke into the parents’ house, scared off Esther’s mother, Jean John, who was sleeping with her daughter, gripped the girl and took her away.
“As they moved about 20 metres from the house, they put her down, cut off her legs and plucked out some hair from her head and disappeared. The father of the child, Mzorewa Mashiri, wasn’t at the house that night, he was at his second wife’s house,” he said.
After the attackers left, he continued, the mother cried for help and neighbours gathered at the scene but they found the child already dead. No one has been arrested in connection with the death of the albino girl.
Esther was studying at Silela Primary School in Kahama District. Her death comes hardly a week after President Jakaya Kikwete announced a national operation to hunt albino killers and just few hours before activists demonstrated in Dar es Salaam on Sunday to protest against albino killings in the country.