Chief: I ordered shots at protesters

More than 40 people died in the clash last December.

KISUMU, Kenya (AP) — The police chief in this opposition stronghold said she ordered her officers to fire on a rioting crowd, saying she was forced to because police were overwhelmed during protests over disputed elections.

The comments from Grace Kaindi, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, were the first to acknowledge police fired on crowds. Previously, police had denied shooting anyone in the turmoil.

“It was an extreme situation and there was no other way to control them,” Kaindi said of the Dec. 29 clash in Kisumu. “I gave the order to open fire myself when I heard that my officers were being overwhelmed. If we had not killed them, things would have got very bad.”

The toll, according to hospital records: 44 shot dead, 143 wounded. Kaindi said one police officer was hurt by a rock hurled from the crowd.

Human rights workers say Kisumu, 200 miles northwest of Nairobi, suffered the worst police brutality because it is a stronghold of opposition leader Raila Odinga, who accuses President Mwai Kibaki of stealing the Dec. 27 election.

International and local observers say the vote count was deeply flawed.

The acknowledged use of deadly force by police was likely to further inflame protesters who believe they are fighting a government that does not represent them, adding to the volatile mix of grievances in a conflict that has political and ethnic overtones.

Clashes have pitted members of Kibaki’s Kikuyu people against Odinga’s Luo and other groups; most of those shot in Kisumu were Luo.

The Dec. 29 clash came a day before the election results were announced.

As it became clear Kibaki was going to claim victory, people in Kisumu armed with clubs and stones broke into stores, looted and set them ablaze, according to reporters at the scene.

Protesters set up roadblocks of burning tires and stoned police, the reporters said, giving wildly varying accounts of the numbers of police and protesters.

“We tried tear gas, but it didn’t calm them,” Kaindi said. “Police felt their lives were in danger because there were very few of them, so they opened fire and controlled the situation.”

She would not say how many officers or rioters were at the scene.

The U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch said in a weekend statement that police were behind dozens of killings and that they fired on both looters and opposition protesters under an unofficial “shoot-to-kill” policy.

Human Rights Watch said even people who did not attend rallies were shot, hit by police gunfire on the fringes of protests.

Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe denied the Human Rights Watch accusations, saying officers have “acted strictly within the laws of this country.”

Meanwhile, in Nairobi, Kenya, Police firing tear gas and bullets halted protests Wednesday, blocking mass rallies the opposition hoped would show the power behind their demands for the president to step down.

At least two people were fatally shot by police.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga called for three days of protests after violence that killed more than 600 people and international mediation failed to move President Mwai Kibaki. Observers say the vote tally from the Dec. 27 election was rigged.

“We will go the extra mile for democracy. We are ready for bloodshed,” said Philomen Bett, a teacher in the western city of Eldoret.

National police spokesman Eric Kiraithe had no word on casualties Wednesday, but a mortuary attendant in Kisumu, Kenya’s third-largest city, said there were two bodies with bullet wounds.

Nurses in the city said they were treating three wounded people.

In Nairobi, at least three men were taken to a hospital after they were shot and wounded in Kibera slum, where police fired tear gas and bullets to disperse protesters.

Odinga told The Associated Press that two people were killed in Kisumu and one in another western town, Migori.