A man has been sentenced death for killing a five-year-old albino girl in Tanzania by hacking off her legs with a machete and then drinking her blood

The High Court in the northern town of Mwanza convicted 50-year-old Kazimiri Mashauri after hearing he disappeared with the severed limbs and left her to die. The girl’s killing was one of a spate of attacks on the country’s estimated 200,000 albinos in the past years, mostly in the remote northwest of the country near Lake Victoria, where superstition runs deep. Albino hunters kill their victims and harvest their blood and body parts for potions. Their body parts are prized in some regions of Tanzania, where witchdoctors say albinos – who lack pigment in their skin, eyes and hair – bring luck in love, life and business. In November 2009, Tanzania’s high court sentenced four men to death for butchering a 50-year-old albino man. The Tanzania Albino Society fears there could be a new wave of albino killings in the east Africa’s second largest economy ahead of elections on Oct. 31, 2010. Around 60 albinos have been killed for their body parts in Tanzania in the past two years, but campaigners say the actual numbers are likely much higher since many cases remain undocumented.