Killing of second opposition MP by police fuels Kenyan rioting

Published on Thursday 31 January 2008 21:19

A POLICE officer in Kenya shot dead an opposition MP yesterday, the second killed in a week, triggering fatal protests and interrupting talks to try to end more than a month of violence.

Warning of catastrophe, Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, said he would travel to Nairobi today from an African Union summit in neighbouring Ethiopia to help his predecessor, Kofi Annan, who has been trying to mediate an end to the crisis.

Political and ethnic violence has killed 850 people in Kenya since the disputed re-election on 27 December of the president, Mwai Kibaki. At least two more people were killed in clashes yesterday.

African leaders also voiced alarm. Abdoulaye Wade, the Senegalese president, said the continent's image was at stake.

The unrest has taken the lid off decades-old divisions between communities over land, wealth and power, dating from British colonial rule and stoked by Kenyan politicians during 44 years of independence.

Fresh protests erupted yesterday after David Kimutai Too, an Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) MP, was killed in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret.

Hussein Ali, the police commissioner, said Mr Too's murder was a "crime of passion".

The traffic police officer responsible, who had been arrested, shot a fellow officer – believed to be his girlfriend – along with the MP, Mr Ali said.

However, Raila Odinga, the ODM leader, insisted it was a political act. "I condemn this second execution of an ODM member of parliament. The purpose of this killing is to reduce the ODM majority," he said.

Shops shut down in Eldoret and some residents began to leave as protesters in the suburbs took to the streets. Witnesses said soldiers fired into the air, killing at least one person.

"When we heard about the death of the MP everybody came out. A Kenyan army Land Rover appeared and they started shooting," one resident, Willy Kiboi, said. "One Sudanese man is dead and three people are injured."

On roads around Eldoret, youths with bows and arrows stopped cars, and smoke rose from burning homes.

A crowd gathered outside the police station, demanding that the accused be handed over. "Let him be brought out so we can do our own justice," one protester shouted. "This is a government plot to wipe out the ODM."

Earlier this week the opposition MP Melitus Were was shot and killed in Nairobi.