Vigilantes in a central Kenyan town took up arms against a violent gang, sparking fierce battles in which at least 29 people were stoned and hacked to death, police and medics said on Tuesday.
The clashes started late on Monday when residents organised in small groups armed with crude weapons decided to fight back against the Mungiki, a violent mafia-like extortionist group infamous for beheading and skinning its victims.
”We have so far received 29 bodies. Most of them their have their arms chopped off,” said Dr David Ndegwa, at the hospital in Karatina, the epicentre of the clashes north of Nairobi.
”We are not able to tell who is Mungiki and who is not,” national police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe told AFP.
”It’s a very bad scene.”
Karatina woke up to scenes of carnage and destruction, with bodies strewn across the streets in pools of blood and corrugated iron shacks demolished or torched by the fighting.
Police arrived in the town on Tuesday and combed through outlying tea plantations for suspects and discarded weapons.
”At night, the groups of locals started attacking some of the youths they suspected to be Mungiki members and slashed some of them to death,” Kiraithe said.
Police sources said at least three people were wounded and 48 arrested.
Karatina town and its surroundings turned into a battlefield as the Mungiki regrouped and fought back, said Kiraithe, explaining that it was an ”all-out war in the villages”.
”All of those killed were hacked or stoned to death. Our officers tried to restore order, otherwise the situation could have degenerated into something much worse than it is,” the police spokesperson added.
At dawn, police forces were attempting to impose order in Karatina and collected machetes and other crude weapons from the scene.
”Some suspects have been arrested and we are hunting for more,” he said.
At least 15 suspected Mungiki members were hacked, stoned or burned to death by mobs in the area over the past 10 days.
”Residents of the two divisions in Kirinyaga and Karatina appear to be tired of these illegal groupings and their activities,” Kiraithe explained.
”Last week, they killed about 15 of them, but we are urging the locals to refrain from lynching suspects. They should hand them over to the police.”
Karatina is north of Nairobi, on the road to the city of Nyeri, in the heartland of Kenya’s dominant Kikuyu tribe. Mungiki are mainly drawn from Kikuyu, President Mwai Kibaki’s ethnic group.
Police officials said there had been little Mungiki presence in the town but that they recently began making inroads there, raising residents’ concerns.
The Mungiki, which means ”multitude” in Kikuyu, claim to be a sect founded by Mau Mau fighters who fought British colonial rule.
Once a quasi-religious group of dreadlocked youths who embraced traditional rituals, the Mungiki were banned in 2002 after evolving into a violent extortionist gang.
After a drive by police and security forces to dismantle the gang in early 2007, human rights activists say the Mungiki were enlisted as a pro-government militia during the post-election tribal clashes that erupted in early 2008.
Police was also accused in a UN report on extrajudicial killings of executing dozens of Mungiki suspects and intimidating rights groups investigating the deaths. — AFP
