Atleast 30 people have been killed in a weekend of continuing post-election violence in kenya, reports said on monday. In the worst incident 22 people in a Rift Valley camp for displaced people reportedly died after being attacked by mobs armed with matchetes and arrows.
There were also killed with matchetes in a Nairobi slum and a further five died in unrest else-where in the country. Former United Nations (UN) Secretary General, Kofi Annan, is due to meet political leaders on Tuesday as part of medistion efforts.
European Union (EU) Development, Louise Michel,has already been crises over the presidential vote. He met President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga and urged both sises to stop exacerbating tensions.
Meanwhile, Kenya’s Foreign Ministry has called in Britain’s High Commissioner in Nairobi Adam Wood to complain about the governmemt’s criticism of Kibaki’s re-election. Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Moses Wetangula, said he was angered by remarks last week in which Foreigh Office Minister, Meg Munn, said London did not recognise his governmrnt-although few governments have recognised the outcome of the controversial poll.
The bodies of the three killed in Mathare slum on sunday bore machete marks. Witnesses said the violence had an ethnic angle, pitting members of Kibaki’s Kikuyu community against Luos like Odinga.
An Associated Press reporter saw the body of one man who was beaten to death, apparently a Luo caught by a ground of Kikuyus. A nother man staggered past, blood streaming from his mutilated arm after a machete attack, the reporter added. A luo woman who spoke to Reuters news agency said she had been asked what tribe she was from.
”Even before I could tell them, they took my bag and even wanted to cut me with a machete,” she said. ” I was just saved by the grace of god, they have taken everything I had.”