African Gets Burned Stoned and Burned Again
nineteen Burned to Death in Violence in Republic of kenya
NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethnically driven violence intensified in Republic of kenya on Lord's day, and police officials said at least nineteen people, including 11 children, were burned to death in a house by a mob.
Even the Kenyan military, deployed for the first time to stop antagonists from attacking ane another, has been unable to halt the wave of revenge killings.
More than 100 people have been killed in the by four days, many of them shot with arrows, burned or hacked with machetes.
Information technology is some of the worst fighting since a disputed election in December ignited long-simmering tensions that accept then far claimed at least 750 lives. The fighting appeared to be spreading Sunday across the Rift Valley region, a particularly picturesque part of Kenya known more for its game parks and fancy lodges.
The Kenyan government is now threatening to arrest pinnacle opposition leaders on suspicion of orchestrating the bloodshed, but opposition leaders are in turn accusing the government of backing criminal gangs.
According to police officials in the Rift Valley town of Naivasha, fighting erupted Lord's day morning between gangs of Kikuyus and Luos, two of Kenya'due south biggest ethnic groups, who have clashed across the country since the election. Witnesses said mobs threw flaming tires and mountains of rocks into the streets to block police officers from entering some neighborhoods. The mobs then went house to business firm, looking for certain people.
Grace Kakai, a police commander in Naivasha, said a big crowd of Kikuyus chased a group of Luos through a slum, trapped them in a house, blocked the doors and set up the business firm afire. Police found 19 bodies huddled in one room, and Ms. Kakai said some of the children'south bodies were so badly burned that they could not be identified.
"All I tin say is that they were school age," she said.
The episode was like to one on Jan. 1, when up to 50 women and children seeking shelter in a church in another Rift Valley boondocks were burned to expiry by a mob. The victims in that instance were by and large Kikuyus, and Kikuyus beyond the country seem to have been attacked more than any other grouping.
In the past few days, many Kikuyus have organized into militias, maxim they are at present ready for revenge.
"The situation is very bad," Ms. Kakai said. "People are fighting each other and trying to drive them out of the area. We have to evacuate people."
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Thousands of families are streaming out of Naivasha, Nakuru, Molo, Eldoret and other towns beyond the Rift Valley, which has become the epicenter of Kenya'due south violence. The province is home to supporters of both Mwai Kibaki, Republic of kenya's president, and Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, and the site of historic state disputes between members of rival ethnic groups.
Mr. Kibaki is a Kikuyu and Mr. Odinga is a Luo, and the disputed election, in which Mr. Kibaki was declared the winner by a narrow margin despite widespread show of vote rigging, set up off the ethnically driven violence.
The Kenya of today is almost unrecognizable compared with the Kenya that until recently was celebrated every bit one of the virtually stable and promising countries on the African continent. On Sun nighttime, local goggle box stations showed menacing young men waving machetes and iron confined at roadblocks along ane of the land'southward busiest highways. The men threw rocks at buses, with 1 large bus run off the road, every bit police officers stood past.
The Kenyan Ground forces was assigned early this month to help evacuate people from conflict zones, but on Friday, for the first time, soldiers were ordered to intervene between warring groups. That did not seem to make much of a difference, and witnesses said the soldiers had been equally ineffective as the law.
A sunset-to-dawn curfew has been imposed in several Rift Valley towns, including Naivasha and Nakuru, simply witnesses said violence continued to rage in the countryside, with bands of armed men burning down huts and attacking indigenous rivals.
Many Kenyans take said the most distressing attribute is that the opposing politicians, instead of cooperating to finish the bloodshed, continue to bicker over who started it.
That is exactly what happened on Lord's day later news of the Naivasha killings spread. Salim Lone, Mr. Odinga'south spokesman, sent out a cellphone message calling the killings "ghastly" and proverb that they were the piece of work of criminal gangs backed by constabulary officers and "function of a well orchestrated plan of terror."
"The regime is doing this to attempt to influence mediation efforts," the message said, referring to the continuing simply then far fruitless negotiations led past Kofi Annan, the old secretary general of the United Nations. "Afterwards stealing the elections from Kenyans, Kibaki now wishes to deny them justice and peace."
Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman, called the accusations "ridiculous."
"What is really happening is a continuation of the ethnic cleansing that Raila'due south people are doing to kill the president'south people," he said.
Mr. Mutua said the violence would end "when we indict the leaders responsible for this."
"We are working on indictments," he said Sunday night. "That will happen very shortly."
Western diplomats accept said in that location is a debate raging within Mr. Kibaki's inner circle about the wisdom of arresting top opposition figures, with some directorate pushing for it, while others fright that the violence will but become worse if the leaders are jailed because their supporters will become on an fifty-fifty more intense binge.
Kenyan newspapers reflected the gloom. "For the umpteenth time, we again ask President Kibaki and Orange Democratic Motion leader Mr. Raila Odinga to work for peace, truth and justice," said an editorial in The Sunday Standard. "Kenya has bled enough."
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/world/africa/28kenya.html
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