Tanzania police offer reward for missing albino girl

Tanzanian police on Sunday offered a reward for information leading to the recovery, dead or alive, of an albino girl feared to have been kidnapped for her body parts.

Four-year-old Pendo Emmanuelle Nundi was kidnapped late last month from her home in the northern Mwanza region, but has yet to be found despite several arrests.

Body parts from albinos are sought after in Tanzania for witchcraft, and at least 74 albinos have been murdered in the east African country since 2000, according to United Nations experts.

"We continue to call on the public to give us information. We have promised three million shillings (around $1,700) for any information that can lead to finding Pendo, dead or alive," Mwanza police chief Valentino Mlowola told state-run TBC1 television.

Since the girl's disappearance, police have arrested 15 people -- including the girl's father and two uncles. The government has also imposed a ban on witchdoctors and has launched an education campaign to end the killing of albinos.

In August, a UN rights expert warned that attacks against albinos were on the rise because Tanzania's October 2015 presidential election was on the horizon, encouraging political campaigners to turn to influential sorcerers for help.

Albino body parts sell for around $600 in Tanzania, with an entire corpse fetching $75,000.