Monday, January 21, 2008
The opposition leader has called for another ‘peaceful protest.’
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Several people were beaten and hacked to death with machetes in a Nairobi slum Sunday in renewed ethnic fighting over Kenya’s disputed election, residents said.
Elsewhere, police managed to quell more than two days of fierce fighting around a Catholic monastery that killed 22 people and left 200 homes burned in the Rift Valley, 190 miles northwest of the capital Nairobi, officials said.
The re-election of President Mwai Kibaki has tapped into a well of resentments that resurfaces regularly at election time in Kenya. But never before has it been so prolonged or taken so many lives.
A government commission says more than 600 people have been killed in violence that erupted after the Dec. 27 election, which opposition leader Raila Odinga accused Kibaki of stealing.
As Kibaki’s power becomes more entrenched each day, the opposition’s best hope may rest in wrangling a power-sharing agreement that might make Odinga prime minister or vice president. International mediation has so far failed to broker such a deal.
Odinga has called for another “peaceful protest” Thursday, saying, “let them bring their guns and we will face them.” The protest will take place in defiance of a ban and despite the deaths of at least 24 people in three days of protests last week — most of them blamed on police.
Sunday’s bloodshed in Nairobi’s Mathare slum, like much of the fighting since the vote, was between the Kikuyu and Luo ethnic groups, said resident Boniface Shikami. President Kibaki is a Kikuyu and Odinga is a Luo.
Shikami said Luos in his street had received notices warning them to leave by nightfall or risk attack.
One man staggered past with blood streaming from the stump of his arm, which had been cut off with a machete. The arm was taken by a group of youths and placed on top of a pile of stones barricading an alleyway.
The maimed man, Peter Kyalo, arrived later at Kenyatta Hospital. He said he was warned Saturday night by Luo friends he might be targeted because he is a Kamba, the same tribe as the vice president, a former presidential candidate who joined Kibaki’s government this month.
In a separate incident, around 50 people attacked welder Dominic Owour, a 23-year-old Luo, and tried to cut off both his hands at the forearm, Owour said.
Both men said police watching the attacks did not intervene.