A 26-year-old hair braider named Josephine Owino disappeared one morning last month in the sprawling shantytown of Mukuru Kwa Njenga in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, after going out suddenly to see someone who had just phoned.

Ms. Owino’s younger sister, Peris Keya, was desperate to find her, and went to three police stations pleading for help. But nothing happened until Ms. Keya said she had a startling dream one night: Her sister appeared, led her up a hill and begged her to search in a pool of water.

Since then, at least 10 sacks with body parts have been fished from an abandoned quarry filled with a thick bed of floating trash, according to the police and human rights activists. The dump was searched only because Ms. Keya, 24, beseeched some local men to help, paying them for the grisly task.

The building, once a warehouse, apartments and offices, is a temporary home — with one shower — for 60 adults and children. On the ground floor, rats sprint under plastic chairs and parked baby strollers. The stench of damp clothes and clogged toilets overpowers the strong scents of tomato and spices from the makeshift kitchenettes on upper floors. In the inner courtyard, laughter echoes as children scoop up giggling babies and gently swing them skyward.

This is a so-called squat in Seine-Saint-Denis, a suburban area east of Paris that at one time was an industrial district. Now, it is a place with trendy cafes and high-fashion houses, as well as abandoned factories and spaces like the warehouse, which have become unauthorized housing for homeless people and immigrants.

Mariam Komara, 40, an undocumented immigrant from the Ivory Coast, has lived there since last year. The other day she was getting ready to go to court to argue that she has the right to stay.

A gunman shot and killed a far-right Ukrainian politician who stirred controversy with campaigns to promote the Ukrainian language and discredit Russian-speaking compatriots, the authorities say.

The former lawmaker, Iryna Farion, was a highly divisive figure. A linguist who belonged to a hard-line nationalist party, she was despised by some for her denunciation of Russian-speaking fighters in elite Ukrainian military units. Many Ukrainians speak Russian, especially in eastern regions closer to Russia.

Ms. Farion, 60, was shot in the head by a young man on a street in the western city of Lviv on Friday evening, and the Ukrainian authorities said early Saturday that they were still searching for the gunman, who fled the scene. Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, said he believed she was targeted for killing.

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