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Kenya police get 'shoot to kill'
order after talks begin
30.01.2008
NAIROBI (AFP) — Kenyan police have been given shoot to kill orders
in a bid to stem weeks of violence, a commander said Wednesday, a
day after Kofi Annan launched crisis talks between feuding
political leaders.
The order, issued for the second time since President Mwai
Kibaki's contested re-election last month, followed the formal
launch by the former UN chief of a dialogue between Kibaki and
opposition leader Raila Odinga, who claims he was robbed of the
presidency.
It also came amid increasing international condemnation of a
spiral of violence in which almost 1,000 people have died and more
than a quarter of a million have been displaced.
"There are four categories of people who will face tough police
action: Those looting property, burning houses, carrying offensive
weapons, barricading roads," the police commander told AFP.
"We have orders to shoot to kill these categories of people if
they are caught in the act," he added.
On Tuesday, military helicopters had fired warning shots to stop
ethnic fighting in the lakeside town of Naivasha, the latest
flashpoint.
Police reported 22 new deaths as political crisis talks began
Tuesday, particularly in opposition strongholds in western Kenya
and the capital's slums.
Annan said he hoped the immediate political issues could be
resolved within four weeks and gave Kenya one year to resolve
damage inflicted by a month of chaos.
"We are confident that the issues can be resolved within a year
and ... that immediate political issues, what we are describing as
short-term issues, can be resolved within four weeks, if not
shorter," he said.
Both leaders called for peace and committed themselves to dialogue.
Each side has formed a negotiating team of three members, but
further details of the talks are as yet unclear.
The rivals still appear to maintain their hardline positions,
however, and Odinga accused "our adversaries" of having a hand in
the killing of an opposition MP in Nairobi on Tuesday.
Odinga has refused to recognise the legitimacy of Kibaki's
presidency and his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) has pressed
for an electoral re-run, but the government has instead pressed
for dialogue.
Members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe suffered heavily in the first
violence after the December 27 election from members of Odinga's
Luo tribe and other ethnic groups, but have since carried out
numerous revenge attacks.
A handful of incidents were reported across the country Wednesday.
One person died overnight after hundreds of Kalenjins attacked a
group of Kikuyu villagers who had returned to collect belongings
from homes they had fled in Njoro, a settlement outside Nakuru,
the provincial capital of the Rift Valley Province.
"There were two groups of attackers numbering about 300. They shot
one man with an arrow to the head and he died on his way to
hospital. Two others were injured," said local resident Ben Anjiri.
Police confirmed the death.
A few houses were also razed in rural settlements nearby, a
witness said.
Police in the town of Kikuyu, just outside Nairobi, fired teargas
to disperse a group of several hundred protesters.
Meanwhile, soldiers armed with assault rifles and whips patrolled
the tense streets of Naivasha, some 80 kilometres (50 miles)
northwest of Nairobi, where three died the previous day.
Several stalls were burned down in the town centre, while some
8,000 displaced Luos remained in a police compound where they have
sheltered since deadly clashes erupted there several days ago,
transforming a tourist town famed for its wildlife.
Thousands of displaced remained in crowded makeshift camps or en
route to areas where they sought safety because their ethnic
groups were in a majority.
Initial political protests have aroused latent ethnic, economic
and land disputes, shattering the relatively-stable east African
nation with some of the worst violence since independence in 1963.
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