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Ethnic clashes erupt in Kenyan
town of Naivasha, at least 7 killed
27.01.2008
NAIVASHA, Kenya (AP) - Gangs armed with machetes and bows and
arrows burned and hacked to death members of a rival tribe in
western Kenya Sunday, as overwhelmed police stood by helplessly.
The fighting in the town of Naivasha was the latest flashpoint of
violence over President Mwai Kibaki's re-election.
Groups from Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe set ablaze the homes of Luo
rivals in the center of the town, about 90 kilometers (55 miles)
northwest of Nairobi, the capital. Police did not intervene.
A reporter counted bodies of seven victims hacked to death or
burned alive in their homes. On Saturday, a Luo couple were
slashed to death with machetes in Naivasha.
More than 700 people have died in ethnic violence and clashes with
police since Kibaki was declared that winner of Dec. 27 balloting
in which observers say the counting was flawed. Some 255,000
people have been forced from their homes.
The eruption of violence in Naivasha appeared to have spread from
Nakuru, Kenya's fourth-largest town some 80 kilometers (50 miles)
away, where at least 25 people were killed on Friday.
In Nakuru, rival ethnic groups armed with homemade guns, machetes
and bows and arrows fought pitched battles on Friday while mobs
torched hundreds of homes.
But Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who claims he won
the election, remain far apart on how to resolve the crisis, the
worst the country has suffered since its 1963 independence from
Britain.
Kibaki has said he is open to direct talks with Odinga, but that
his position as president is not negotiable. Odinga says Kibaki
must step down and new elections are the only way to bring peace.
On Sunday, Odinga was meeting with former U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, the latest international mediator attempting to bring
the two sides together.
Annan toured trouble spots Saturday in the western Rift Valley,
which includes Naivasha, and alluded to underlying causes of the
conflict, including decades-old resentment of Kikuyus' domination
of politics and the economy, and old grudges over land between
different ethnic groups.
«We cannot accept the pattern every five years these sorts of
incidents take place and no one is held to account,» Annan said. «Let's
not kid ourselves this is an electoral problem. This is much
broader.
While ethnic clashes have accompanied past Kenyan elections, the
scale of the violence this year has been far worse. It has mainly
pitted other ethnic groups, which support the opposition because
they feel marginalized, against Kibaki's Kikuyu people.
Kikuyus were the main victims in the initial eruption of violence,
with hundreds killed and more than half of those driven from their
homes belonging to Kibaki's tribe. Now it appears they are on the
war path.
The crisis has destroyed the East African nation's image as a
peaceful haven in a region rife with conflict.
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