Three Killed in Post-Election Crisis in Kenya

Date: 12 August 2017 - 21:11

News ID: ۴۲۷۸۴

NAIROBI (AFP) -- Three people, including a child, have been shot dead in Kenya during opposition protests which flared for a second day Saturday after the hotly disputed election victory of President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Demonstrations and running battles with police broke out in isolated parts of Nairobi slums after anger in opposition strongholds against Tuesday's election that losing candidate Raila Odinga claims was rigged.
Interior Minister Fred Matiangi blamed the unrest on "criminal elements" looting and robbing businesses and assured Kenyans that "there is no need for alarm", urging them to return to their daily lives.
The uncertainty gripping the nation provided a grim reminder of a disputed 2007 election which led to two months of ethno-political violence that left 1,100 dead and 600,000 displaced.
Kenyatta was declared the victor in the presidential election Friday night with 54.27 percent to Odinga's 44.74, with protests erupting in the opposition leader's strongholds in Nairobi and the western city of Kisumu almost immediately.
Local government official Wilson Njega confirmed one person had been shot dead outside Kisumu in protests, while an AFP reporter saw three patients with gunshot wounds in the city's hospital.
At the hospital Truphena Achieng said his brother had been shot and injured "and yet he was just standing outside our house where people were demonstrating ... we don't know why police were shooting."
In the southwestern town of Siaya, a police officer speaking on condition of anonymity said a man had been shot dead in a demonstration, but "we have not managed to collect the body ... because of resistance from protesters."
On Saturday morning, an AFP photographer saw the body of a nine-year-old boy whose family said he had been shot in the back while watching the protests from a fourth floor balcony in Mathare, a slum in the capital.
Human Rights Watch on Saturday urged police to show restraint.
Odinga, 72, is a veteran opposition politician seen as having taken his last shot at the presidency, which he has sought four times. He believes elections in 2007, 2013 and now 2017 were snatched away from him.
Politics in Kenya is largely divided along tribal lines, and the winner-takes-all nature of elections has long stoked communal tensions.