Police fired tear gas to disperse anti-government youths throwing rocks and taunting them at a memorial service on Wednesday organised by the opposition for people killed in an election protest crackdown.
The latest trouble came as former United Nations chief Kofi Annan was to begin talks with President Mwai Kibaki and opposition challenger Raila Odinga to resolve a bloody stalemate that has erased the East African nation’s image as a stable democracy.
And at least two people were killed in a Nairobi slum in the latest in a series of ethnic clashes linked to the December 27 election. Odinga says Kibaki stole the vote, which split the country down the middle.
Police had eased a ban on public demonstrations, in place since Kibaki’s December 30 swearing-in triggered bouts of rioting and looting, to permit the memorial attended by more than a thousand Odinga backers at a football field in Nairobi.
The day began peacefully as thousands of supporters marched from near the Kibera slum, a stronghold of Odinga’s Luo tribe, carrying coffins of people they say were killed by police there.
But the memorial turned violent when about dozen youths stopped cars, smashed windows and beat some occupants who did not belong to their Luo tribe on the road outside.
Police moved in but held fire, witnesses said, as a growing crowd of youths threw rocks at them. They eventually responded with a fusillade of tear gas, some of which landed in the football field just after Odinga had finished speaking.
The youths then began smashing a nearby post office, set it ablaze and tore a wall down, a Reuters reporter said. The fire brigade put out the blaze.
Protests off
Earlier, opposition sources said ODM would call off protests planned for Thursday.
”Annan has told us he will request no more street protests while he is here, and I can tell you we will not be objecting to that,” a senior Odinga aide told Reuters.
The 69-year-old African statesman arrived late on Tuesday in the Kenyan capital to join a team of other African leaders in brokering an end to an impasse between Kibaki and Odinga, both of whom he was due to meet on Wednesday.
Clashes between Kibaki and Odinga supporters along tribal lines and a crackdown by security forces have killed at least 650 people over the past month, prompting international calls for both men to hold urgent talks.
Underscoring the urgency of Annan’s mission, two men were found dead — one stoned and one decapitated — in Nairobi’s Kariobangi slum. Area police commander Paul Ruto said the fighting was between Luos and Kibaki’s Kikuyu ethnic group.
”So far we carried out an operation and have arrested five people. We have found a panga [machete] with blood stains,” Ruto said, next to a pick-up truck carrying the body with its head nearly sheared off.
At least eight others were reported killed in the city and the Rift Valley, local media said. The government accuses the ODM of planning ethnic killings to settle land grievances, carried out under the cover of election violence.
Odinga has demanded Kibaki stand down or face an election repeat, which some diplomats have cautioned against as having too much potential for further bloodshed.
But Odinga hinted he may accept the creation of a prime minister post for him. Odinga says Kibaki reneged on a promise to do that, in exchange for his support at the 2002 election. ”We want constitutional reform … We are ready to share power with him. He remains president and we take the position of prime minister,” Odinga told Germany’s ARD television. — Reuters