11 killed in Kenya post-poll unrest

Top Stories

11 killed in Kenya post-poll unrest
A protester holds up the spent casing of a bullet fired by police during a lull in clashes in the Mathare area of Nairobi on Saturday.

Nairobi - The bodies of nine young men shot dead overnight in Nairobi's Mathare slum were brought to the city morgue

By Reuters

  • Follow us on
  • google-news
  • whatsapp
  • telegram

Published: Sat 12 Aug 2017, 9:40 PM

Last updated: Sat 12 Aug 2017, 11:44 PM

Kenyan police killed at least 11 people in a crackdown on protests as anger at the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta erupted in the western city of Kisumu and slums surrounding the capital, officials and witnesses said on Saturday.
The bodies of nine young men shot dead overnight in Nairobi's Mathare slum were brought to the city morgue, a security official told Reuters, adding that the men had been killed during a police anti-looting operation.
Separately, a young girl in Mathare was killed by police firing "sporadic shots", a witness said. The run-down neighbourhood is loyal to 72-year-old opposition leader Raila Odinga, whose party rejected Tuesday's vote as a "charade".
A Reuters reporter in Kisumu, centre of post-election ethnic violence a decade ago in which 1,200 people died nationwide, said tear gas and live rounds were fired. A government official said one man had been killed in the county.
The unrest erupted moments after Kenya's election commission announced late on Friday that Kenyatta, 55, had secured a second five-year term in office, despite opposition allegations that the tally was a fraud.
Interior Minister Fred Matiang'i said the trouble was localised and blamed it on "criminal elements" rather than legitimate political protest.
Odinga's Nasa coalition provided no evidence for its rejection of the result, and Kenya's main monitoring group, ELOG, said on Saturday that its tally matched the official outcome.
In addition to the deaths, officials at Kisumu's main hospital said they had treated 26 people since Friday night, including four people with gunshot wounds and others who had been beaten by police.
One man, 28-year-old Moses Oduor, was inside his home in the impoverished district of Obunga when police conducting house-to-house raids dragged him out of his bedroom and beat him with clubs.
"He was not out fighting them. He was rescued by my sister who lives next to him," said his brother, Charles Ochieng. "She came outside screaming at the police, asking why they are beating people."
More shooting was heard outside the hospital on Saturday morning. In Nairobi, armed police backed by water cannon moved through the rubble-strewn streets of Kibera, another pro-Odinga slum.
As with previous votes in 2007 and 2013, this year's elections have exposed the underlying ethnic tensions in the nation of 45 million people, the economic engine of East Africa and the region's main trading hub.
In particular, Odinga's Luo tribe, who hail from the west, hoped an Odinga presidency would break the Kikuyu and Kalenjin dominance of central government since independence in 1963. Kenyatta, the son of Kenya's first president, is a Kikuyu.


More news from