KENYA: Protests erupt over Rift Valley violence

Record ID: 360648

  • Title: KENYA: Protests erupt over Rift Valley violence
  • Date: 29th January 2008
  • Summary: BURNING TYRES IN THE MIDDLE OF ROAD/ POLICE CAR DRIVING PAST MAN THROWING ROCK INTO FIRE MAN ROLLS TYRE INTO BURNING ROAD BLOCK
  • Embargoed: 13th February 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA2SHUYUP588C1TKPK07NFT7DH5
  • Story Text: Protests have erupted in Kenya after a weekend of ethnic clashes in the Rift Valley left dozens of people dead, as the police struggle to keep rival supporters apart.
    Thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets of Kisumu, in western Kenya, on Monday (January 28) to protest over weekend clashes in Rift Valley province that left dozens of people dead.
    Children who had gone to school earlier in the morning were hurriedly picked up by their guardians as smoke rose from the city.
    Police fired teargas and bullets at pro-opposition demonstrators who were complaining about the killings of members of their Luo ethnic community in the towns of Nakuru and Naivasha in violence there since Friday.
    The Rift Valley violence has taken the death toll from unrest since Kenya's disputed December 27 election to around 800.
    Machete-wielding mobs faced off in the latest bout of ethnic violence touched off by a disputed election.
    The tit-for-tat violence complicated the task of former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, who has asked both sides to name teams to negotiate an end to the electoral crisis that has laid bare the tribal undercurrents of Kenya's politics.
    The violence has taken on a momentum of its own, with cycles of killing and revenge between tribes who have never reconciled divisions left by British colonial policy, and exacerbated by politicians.
    Residents said angry Luos burned two Kikuyus in their homes in a Kisumu slum, and police shot two people dead.
    One man who was wounded by a bullet to the stomach was carried to hospital in critical condition on a cart as his helpers waved a poster of opposition leader Raila Odinga in the air.
    The dispute over President Mwai Kibaki's re-election -- which the opposition says was rigged -- has plunged Kenya into a spiral of violence, battering its image as an east African trade and tourism hub and one of the continent's more stable nations.
    Attacks in the immediate aftermath of Kibaki's win were mainly against his Kikuyu tribe -- the largest and richest in Kenya -- but members of that group, including the outlawed Mungiki gang, have begun fighting back, Kenyans say.
    In Naivasha on Monday, police created a buffer zone between rival Kikuyu and Luo protesters, firing shots in the air to stop stone throwing.
    Residents said two protesters were shot dead.
    The number of 250,000 refugees, from one of Kenya's darkest episodes since independence in 1963, looked certain to swell as thousands more fled the chaos.
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