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Kenyans flee for their lives
05/01/2008 22:14 - (SA)
Todd Pitman
Cheptiret - Thousands of terrified refugees under armed escort
fled western Kenya on Saturday in buses that streamed down roads
strewn with downed power lines, burnt-out vehicles and the corpses
of others killed trying to escape an explosion of post-election
ethnic violence over the past week.
Behind the fleeing busloads, thousands more huddled at church
compounds and a police station in the city of Eldoret as wailing
relatives tried to identify hacked, burned and strangled family
members in a mortuary so full of bodies they lay piled
wall-to-wall across bloody floors.
"We are defending democracy," said one man in Cheptiret, Bernard
Kimutai, trying to explain the ethnic violence unleashed across
Kenya after a presidential vote that the opposition claims
President Mwai Kibaki stole.
At Cheptiret, 20km south of Eldoret, bus after packed bus mostly
carrying people from Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe, drove slowly past
soldiers loyal to the president who stood guard at a roadblock.
Hours earlier, a machete-wielding mob had controlled the roadblock.
Wide-eyed passengers pointed out the windows, hands covering their
mouths, as they looked at two bodies lying in the dirt on the
roadside next to the charred hulk of a white minibus.
'They failed to identify themselves'
The two slain men had been pelted with stones by Kalenjin mobs
several days earlier and then set ablaze, said Kimutai, an ethnic
Kalenjin who said he was a human rights worker. "They failed to
identify themselves properly, and then tried to run," he said,
indicating he believed they were Kikuyu.
The dispute between Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga over
who won a bitterly contested December 27 presidential vote has
ignited some of the worst ethnic unrest in Kenya's history,
destroying its image as a stable democracy and a top tourist
destination. Hundreds have been killed and at least 250 000 have
been displaced across Kenya.
Kibaki was declared winner of the election by 200 000 votes, but
the head of the electoral commission and the country's attorney
general have questioned the results, saying the controversial
tally must be independently reviewed.
Kenya's population is a mosaic of more than 40 tribes, and
tensions between them have rarely boiled into open, widespread
conflict. But the prosperity and power of the influential Kikuyu
minority has led to a simmering resentment among some for years.
Fleeing for safety
Ken Wafulah, director of Eldoret's independent Centre for Human
Rights and Democracy, estimated up to 5 000 people left Eldoret
for more safety in the capital, Nairobi, on Saturday in five
convoys that included long trails of private cars.
Those who could not afford to move stayed behind, some displaced
within their own town, sleeping in the open around churches in
which they sought refuge.
The worst atrocity of the crisis occurred at a Protestant church
on the outskirts of Eldoret last week. A mob set fire to the
church where hundreds of terrified people had taken refuge. Many
were burned alive.
Those caught trying to escape the flames were hunted down and
hacked with machetes. Dozens of Kikuyus were killed there.
Philip Cheptinga, a doctor at the Eldoret's Moi Teaching and
Referral Hospital - the country's second-largest - said most
victims had been hacked to death with machetes known as "pangas,"
shot with bows and arrows, or burned.
The hospital's morgue was built for 60 bodies, but on Saturday it
held about 210. Cheptinga said family members had collected at
least 20 more corpses.
Hospital administrator Micah Kosgei said at least 123 corpses from
election-related violence had been brought to the hospital.
Three bodies to a gurney
Bodies, including those of children, were stacked two and three to
a gurney inside barely refrigerated freezers. One man had a long,
deep gash, apparently from a machete, across the side of his
skull. Only the charred skeleton of another remained.
In another room, an elderly woman lay on top of a stretcher, the
fraying rope that strangled her still wrapped around her neck.
"You haven't even seen the casualty ward," Cheptinga said. "We're
doing our level-best to cope with this ... and we're still getting
more."
Hospital officials said two Kikuyus had been killed and one
wounded early Saturday by a Kalenjin mob on the outskirts of
Eldoret.
One man, who declined to be identified because he feared for his
safety, said his brother was similarly slaughtered on Tuesday and
that there was going to be revenge killing.
Emily Bunoro said her nephew, an ethnic Luhya pastor, had been
forced from his home by a group of Kalenjin who gave him a bow and
arrow and told him to fight earlier this week.
He escaped and hid in a pit latrine at what he thought was a
friendly Kikuyu home. But its owners, fearing for their own lives,
killed him with machetes, Bunoro said.
As the man's body was removed from a pile among dozens of others,
lowered into a waiting wooden coffin and loaded onto an ambulance
to be taken away for burial, his wife Victoria Atemba wept in the
arms of her sister.
Shot while buying milk
Twenty kilometres north of Eldoret in the rural countryside, a
group of Kalenjin men buried one of their own. Residents said he
had been shot inexplicably as he tried to buy milk.
Wafulah, the rights worker, said police had killed the man as he
and a group of others prepared to carry out raids on the Kikuyu
community.
"It's only these extrajudicial police killings that are
restraining them," Wafula said of the Kalenjin.
But most Kalenjin do not have firearms, "and they're afraid there
may be reprisals," he added.
The government has deployed reinforcements of armed security
forces to Eldoret who have cleared roads of rocks and tree trunks
and taken back roadblocks from militias.
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