Medical charity Médecins sans Frontières on Friday accused Kenyan police of forcing families displaced in post-election violence to return home. The group said its workers in western Kenya’s Endebess camp on Wednesday saw police move from tent to tent, threatening displaced families to make them leave.
Thousands of Kenyans returned home on Monday under a government programme to resettle families displaced by the violence that followed elections at the end of last year. An initial batch of several hundred left camps in several Rift Valley towns back to the countryside under police and army escort.
Kenyan police on Wednesday arrested scores of members of a criminal sect whose clashes with authorities this week caused 19 deaths, officials said, as the government vowed to deal ruthlessly with the gang. Hundreds of riot police descended on Nairobi’s Eastlands slums and central Kenyan districts.
Four more people died during a second day of nationwide rioting in Kenya on Tuesday, bringing the overall toll to 19, in a crisis that presented the new coalition Cabinet with its first major challenge. Police said they had killed three members of the Mungiki gang and accused its members of having hacked a Nairobi watchman to death.
Seventeen people were killed in Kenya’s Rift Valley region over the past 36 hours, where cattle theft has fanned tribal animosity, bringing the toll to 25 in three days, police said on Thursday. Cattle raiders killed 12 villagers and police retaliated, killing five of the attackers in the Baringo district.
No image available
/ 12 February 2008
Kofi Annan urged Kenya’s rival leaders on Monday to hold urgent talks to find an end within 72 hours to the political crisis and unrest that has left more than 1 000 people dead. Annan was appointed as mediator by the African Union to try to broker an agreement to end weeks of violence since a disputed December 27 presidential election.
No image available
/ 29 January 2008
Former United Nations chief Kofi Annan brought together Kenya’s political rivals on Tuesday in a push to mediate an end to the post-election crisis and stop spreading tribal bloodshed. About a dozen people were killed in the country on Tuesday, bringing the toll to more than 850.
No image available
/ 26 January 2008
Gunfire rang out in Nakuru, Kenya, on Saturday and armed gangs manned roadblocks in the Rift Valley town where ethnic clashes have killed at least 25 people in 24 hours, witnesses said. Paramilitary police patrolled the provincial capital, which had previously been spared post-election violence that has killed around 700 people.
No image available
/ 19 January 2008
Two German nationals and a Dutch woman filmmaker were arrested by Kenyan police on suspicions related to terrorism, a police spokesperson said on Friday in Nairobi. The German Foreign Ministry in Berlin identified one of those held as Andrej Hermlin, a Berlin jazz musician.
No image available
/ 18 January 2008
Opposition street protests over the disputed re-election of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki will end after demonstrations planned for Friday, a spokesperson said. At least eight people have been shot dead by police during two days of protests called by Raila Odinga, leader of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement.
No image available
/ 14 January 2008
The Kenyan government on Monday rejected a mediation mission by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan to try to end political unrest and sent a stern warning to the opposition ahead of nationwide protests. Two weeks after President Mwai Kibaki’s contested re-election sparked violence that has left hundreds dead, Annan was due in Nairobi.
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.
Brutal unrest across Kenya over President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election left about 150 people dead on Monday — some hacked to death — taking the overall toll to at least 185 killed in four days. Police opened fire on some protesters and looters and many people were killed with machetes as ethnic tensions mounted.
No image available
/ 31 December 2007
An eruption of fresh violence triggered by Kenya’s disputed presidential ballot left more than 100 dead on Monday, after defeated opposition candidate Raila Odinga rejected Mwai Kibaki’s re-election. Further clashes were feared as Odinga planned to hold his own alternative inauguration at a mass rally later on Monday.
No image available
/ 5 December 2007
Land clashes in Kenya’s fertile Rift Valley highlands have killed 16 people, uprooted hundreds and fuelled fears of a bloody campaign ahead of a December 27 election, police said on Wednesday. About 14-million Kenyans are eligible to vote in presidential and parliamentary elections in East Africa’s biggest economy but many are braced for violent skirmishes.
No image available
/ 26 November 2007
More than 8 000 Kenyans have been executed or tortured to death since 2002 when police launched a crackdown on a banned, politically-linked sect, a group of Kenyan lawyers said on Sunday. Security forces launched a crackdown on the Mungiki sect after it was banned in March 2002.
No image available
/ 25 October 2007
Police may have killed hundreds of people in a crackdown on Kenya’s notorious Mungiki gang, a rights group said on Thursday, in a growing national controversy ahead of a presidential election in December. Police are furiously denying the new accusations, calling them an attempt to besmirch authorities.
No image available
/ 24 October 2007
A series of bodies found dumped in secluded bushland on the edge of Kenya’s capital Nairobi has terrified locals and brought accusations of police executions in their war on the notorious Mungiki criminal gang. Locals say more than a dozen corpses have turned up in recent weeks, thrown by the roadside or left in scrub.