| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa Horn |
| Three killed in Kenya clashes with opposition defiant |
| 2008-01-21 |
| Attackers hacked three people to death with machetes in a slum in Kenya's capital on Sunday in ethnic clashes triggered by President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election last month, witnesses said. Armed police chased away youths in Nairobi's Huruma neighborhood, whose name means "mercy" in Swahili, and some residents started to leave with their belongings on their heads. "I saw three people dead, killed by pangas (machetes), slashed on the head, cuts on the back and a hand chopped off," said Samuel Oduor, 22, a freelance cameraman. Other witnesses confirmed the death toll from fighting between youths from Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group and the Luo tribe of opposition challenger Raila Odinga. They bring the number of dead to at least 34 since the opposition launched three days of anti-government demonstrations on Wednesday. Many were killed by police opening fire on protesters, others by ethnic gangs. "No need to kill somebody because of his tribe, even if he did not vote for me," Odinga told several hundred supporters as he came out of a church service in Nairobi's Kibera slum, its roads blackened with the remains of days of flaming barricades. Odinga said a memorial service would be held at a sports field in central Nairobi on Wednesday for those who had died and repeated a call for more demonstrations from Thursday, despite police orders to prevent rallies. "You can beat our body, but you cannot break our spirit of justice," he told cheering supporters, some holding up banners reading "Raila our solution" or "Kibaki hand over to Raila". |
| Posted by:Fred |