At least 23 people lost their lives in the ongoing violence in in the Rift
Valley town of Naivasha, as 19 people were killed in gunbattles and the dead bodies of other 14 were retrieved in the wee hours of Monday.
As many as 19 people were killed here on Sunday in battles between members of President Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe and Luos and Kalenjins who backed his rival Raila Odinga in disputed elections a month ago.
At least 750 people have died since the Dec. 27 polls 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.
They have been killing our people, burning our houses," said David Gitonga, a Naivasha resident who had been manning a roadblock until the army cleared it away. "Now it’s our turn to have justice."
Odinga put the death toll in Naivasha at 30 and blamed the government for trying to divert the attention of the mediation team away from the original electoral dispute.
The Kenya Red Cross said it wanted to retrieve and count the bodies in Naivasha before giving a definitive toll. Charred corpses lay among collapsed rafters in one house in the town.
At least 14 people burned to death as they sheltered from ethnic violence in houses in Kenya’s western town of Naivasha Sunday.
"We have found 14 bodies burnt in houses," a police commander said while talking to a French news agency. "It appears the attackers locked them in and set them ablaze."
Most of the new Naivasha fatalities were workers from local flower farms, the police commander said.
"Police experienced difficulties getting into the houses," he said. "They forced their way in and found bodies of men, women and children burnt beyond recognition."
Gangs armed with machetes and bows and arrows have led clashes throughout the western Rift Valley.
Police confirmed that an unspecified number of people had died in ethnic clashes between scores of youths in Naivasha’s Kabati slums earlier Sunday.
Leave Your Comments