Police raids, arson and tribal attacks over the last 24 hours have claimed more than 100 lives in Kenya, police and officials said on Tuesday, bringing the toll for five days of post-election bloodshed to 299.
”At least 30 have burned to death inside a church in the Kiamba area,” a police commander said.
A Red Cross official said: ”We have been informed that 42 have been taken to hospital with severe burns, but I am yet to confirm the death toll in the church.”
A police commander said police had been given shoot-to-kill orders for western city Eldoret, the town where the Kenya Assemblies of God church was located.
Ten others died after their house was set ablaze in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, police said.
Forty-eight bodies, most of them with fresh bullet wounds, were brought to the morgue in the western Kenya city of Kisumu, a mortuary attendant told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday.
”They brought in 48 bodies, including three children, 44 had fresh bullet wounds, four were hacked with machetes,” the mortuary attendant said. Police described seven other burnt bodies brought to the mortuary as looters.
Police raids and tribal clashes over the past two days had already claimed 53 lives in Kisumu, the country’s third city and a stronghold of defeated presidential challenger Raila Odinga.
”In total since yesterday [Monday], we have 101 bodies lying in the mortuary,” the attendant added amid fears more victims would be discovered.
In Kisumu’s Kondele slum, ”there are three uncollected bodies lying on the ground”, John Otieno, a local resident, told an AFP correspondent on the scene.
”Police went on a killing spree overnight. They have been shooting indiscriminately at people,” he added.
At least 18 other people were killed overnight in the nearby town of Eldoret and its surroundings, police said.
An AFP correspondent in the town counted 11 bodies strewn in the streets with bullet or machete wounds.
The latest reports bring to at least 299 the total number of people who have been killed in the East African nation since the disputed December 27 polls, which saw incumbent President Mwai Kibaki retain his job amid rigging charges.
Defeated opposition leader Raila Odinga has rejected the outcome of the elections that the European Union observer mission said fell short of international standards, and called for an independent audit into the results.
Serious concerns
Washington initially congratulated Kibaki on his re-election but the United States State Department on Monday withdrew the endorsement of the vote count made 24 hours earlier.
”We do have serious concerns, as I know others do, about irregularities in the vote count, and we think it’s important that those concerns … be resolved through constitutional and legal means,” State Department spokesperson Tom Casey said.
”I’m not offering congratulations to anybody,” he added.
The government has enforced a ban on live television broadcasts related to the election in what it says is an effort to contain the violence.
”We know there are skirmishes in many parts of the country. We are fully cracking down and fully responding to every situation,” police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe said.
The United Nations’s top human rights official, Louise Barbour, called Monday on the Kenyan authorities to root out security force excesses.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon ”urges the security forces to show utmost restraint” and ”appeals to the population for calm, patience and respect for law”, his press office said in a statement.
Amnesty International called for an independent probe into the killings of civilians.
”Those responsible for human rights abuses should be brought to justice without undue delay,” the group said in a statement.
Police clamped a day-time curfew on the Kisumu, with an order to shoot violators. — AFP
