Man eats nephew's head

Nairobi - A Kenyan man has been arrested after allegedly decapitating his infant nephew and eating parts of the severed head after a row with the boy's mother, police said on Tuesday.

"The man chopped off the head of a young child using a panga, tapped and sucked blood and then drunk it, before starting to eat part of the head," Rift Valley deputy police chief Peter Leiyan said.

"Police were alerted by the wailing mother and neighbours and we arrested the suspect while he was boiling the head to drink the soup as well as eat it," in a village in Koibatek district on Saturday, Leiyan added.

The man's motives were being investigated, said police, adding that he had no known history of cannibalism.

Koibatek Police chief Maurice Kiplagat said the suspect attacked the one-year-old boy after fruitless attempts to send his mother back to her estranged husband.

"They quarrelled and the suspect stormed into his father's house, armed himself with a machete and chopped off the boy's head," Kiplagat told the East African Standard newspaper.

As the mother ran away screaming, neighbours responded swiftly and found the man quietly seated in the kitchen waiting for soup to boil, the Standard said in a front-page story.