NAIROBI/KISUMU, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenyan police killed at least 11 people
in a crackdown on protests as anger at the re-election of President Uhuru
Kenyatta erupted
in the western city of Kisumu and slums surrounding the
capital, officials and witnesses said on Saturday.
The bodies of nine young men shot dead overnight in Nairobi's Mathare
slum were brought to the city morgue, a security official told Reuters, adding
that the men had been killed during a police anti-looting operation.
Separately, a young girl in Mathare was killed by police firing
"sporadic shots", a witness said. The run-down neighborhood is loyal
to 72-year-old opposition leader Raila Odinga, whose party rejected Tuesday's
vote as a "charade".
A Reuters reporter in Kisumu, center of post-election ethnic violence a
decade ago in which 1,200 people died nationwide, said tear gas and live rounds
were fired. A government official said one man had been killed in the county.
The unrest erupted moments after Kenya's election commission announced
late on Friday that Kenyatta, 55, had secured a second five-year term in
office, despite opposition allegations that the tally was a fraud.
Interior Minister Fred Matiang'i said the trouble was localized and
blamed it on "criminal elements" rather than legitimate political
protest.
Odinga's NASA coalition provided no evidence for its rejection of the
result, and Kenya's main monitoring group, ELOG, said on Saturday that its
tally matched the official outcome.
In addition to the deaths, officials at Kisumu's main hospital said they
had treated 26 people since Friday night, including four people with gunshot
wounds and others who had been beaten by police.
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