Police turn machine guns on protesters as Kenya fractures

Published on Friday 18 January 2008 21:48

AT LEAST 13 people were killed in Kenya yesterday when police fired into a Nairobi slum and different ethnic groups clashed during protests against the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki.

The worst bloodshed was in the huge Kibera slum, an opposition stronghold, where at least seven people were killed and a dozen were wounded by police automatic gunfire.

The French medical charity MSF called it a "massacre".

Police also opened fire and lobbed tear gas in the port of Mombasa, where one person was killed in protests after Friday Muslim prayers, and the southern town of Narok.

Yesterday's deaths were the highest number of confirmed killings in three days of protests called by opposition leader Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) against Kibaki's re-election.

At least 21 people have been killed in the demonstrations, which were due to end on Friday. About 650 people have been killed since the disputed 27 December election.

The opposition and human rights organisations accuse the police of using excessive force and firing indiscriminately at unarmed protesters. Police say they only fire at rioters and looters.

Reuters journalists counted seven bodies from the Kibera shooting, including a man with the back of his head blown off and 15-year-old girl, Rosa Otieno. Both were carried to the nearby Masaba hospital morgue in a pickup truck.

Otieno's aunt, Martha Mtishi, said: "If they can kill a little girl let them kill us all."

At least 11 wounded people were brought to the hospital. "We need more doctors because ... we cannot handle an emergency of this magnitude," said a medical official who gave his name only as Joe.

Outside the hospital a crowd shouted: "Murderers and killers."

In south-west Kenya, officials said five people were killed in clashes between Mr Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe and tribal Maasai protesters in Narok town, gateway to the Maasai Mara game reserve. They were killed with arrows and machetes.

MSF official Ian Van Engelgem said: "We have seen violence over the last two weeks but today it has really exploded. Young guys – 13 years old– have died, young women, young men, this is unbelievable ... this is like a massacre."

A statement by envoys from nine countries including Britain, the Netherlands and Australia, urged Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga to meet for direct talks without delay or preconditions, and called on Kenya's security forces to show restraint.

"We have seen clear and disturbing footage of the use of lethal force on unarmed demonstrators," it said.

The opposition said earlier yesterday that it would call off street protests and switch its campaign to small strikes and boycotts of companies run by Kibaki allies.