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Latest Kenya Ethnic Clashes Kill
69
27.01.2008
Associated Press
By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY
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 the death toll from the latest explosion
of violence over disputed presidential elections rose to 69.
Some 55 bodies were counted Sunday at the morgue in Nakuru, the
provincial capital where ethnic clashes erupted Thursday night and
continued until Saturday. Bodies continued arriving Sunday, said a
morgue attendant who spoke on condition of anonmyity because he
was not authorized to speak to the media.
Houses were blazing in the tourist gateway town of Naivasha, 55
miles northwest of Nairobi, where at least nine people were killed,
according to the count of a local reporter. A local newspaper
reporter saw another five bodies Sunday in two slums on the
outskirts of Nakuru, called Kaptembwa and Sewage.
The latest deaths raise the toll to nearly 800 killed in ethnic
violence and clashes with police since President Mwai Kibaki was
declared winner of Dec. 27 balloting that international and local
observers say had a rigged tally. Some 255,000 people have been
forced from their homes.
In Naivasha, groups from Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe set ablaze the
homes of Luo rivals in the center of the town. Police, apparently
overwhelmed, did not intervene.
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.
Opposition spokesman Salim Lone said they were asked to name three
negotiators for the talks, which he said he would hopefully start
"within a week."
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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