Half a town burnt down in Kenya
2008-01-25 13:23
Nairobi - Half a town has been burned down and at least two people have been killed in the latest ethnic clashes in western Kenya sparked by a dispute over elections, says the Kenya Red Cross Society.
Some 50 people had been wounded by clubs and machetes, and up to 3 000 had been made homeless in fighting that erupted on Thursday at Total Station, Red Cross Secretary General Abbas Gullet said.
Aid workers said the violence pits people from President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group against Kalenjin supporting opposition leader Raila Odinga.
Sixty percent of Total Station's buildings had been razed in fires, Gullet said. The town was in the Rift Valley, which had seen some of the worst of the post-election violence.
"The spiral effects of counterattacks and reprisals is getting out of hand in the Rift Valley," said Gullet.
50 000 people flee homes
He showed film of people fleeing for safety to a mosque and police station with columns of flames and black smoke rising in the background.
He said up to 50 000 people had fled their homes in recent days in other Rift Valley clashes around Molo, 160km northwest of Nairobi, in the western Rift Valley.
Across the country since the December 27 vote, at least 685 people had been killed in riots and ethnic fighting and some 255 000 people had been forced from their homes.
On Thursday, Kibaki and Odinga held talks for the first time since the disputed December 27 election.
They were under international pressure to find a way to share power, but the president angered the opposition by insisting after Thursday's hour-long meeting mediated by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan that his position as head of state was not negotiable.
Kibaki's govt 'not legitimate'
On Friday, the opposition said Kibaki should not be allowed to send a delegation to an African Union summit planned next week in neighbouring Ethiopia.
Salim Lone, spokesperson for Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement, said: "We are telling the world, including the AU, that Kibaki's government is not the legitimate government.
"The AU should accept our call because Kibaki lost the election and all the independent institutions in the world have shown this was a fraudulent election."
Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka reiterated Kibaki's position on Friday, saying: "The matter of the legitimacy of the government is not in doubt whatsoever."
International allies, though, had said the vote tally was rigged.
The Pan-African Parliament, set up under the AU, on Thursday issued a report from its election monitors that said Kenya's elections did not meet democratic standards.
It urged the AU "to look into a protocol that will deal with future revelations of vote-rigging by member states using state power".
- AP