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Kenyan cops clash with gang
15/04/2008 12:12 - (SA)
Nairobi - A notorious criminal gang has clashed with riot police, erected blazing roadblocks and vowing to take its fight nationwide in an unsettling reminder of Kenya's fragile peace after a deadly post-election crisis.
The violence started before dawn on Monday and killed at least four people as members of the outlawed Mungiki gang protested the death of their imprisoned leader's wife, who was found beheaded last week, authorities said.
"This is lawlessness and sheer madness," Joseph Kanyiri, a district commissioner in Nairobi, said.
He said the fighting was gang-related, and not connected to the December 27 election that unleashed weeks of bloodshed and tarnished Kenya's reputation for stability in a region that included war-ravaged Somalia and Sudan.
Challenge to new govt
But the bloodshed, if it continues, posed a challenge to Kenya's new power-sharing government, which was formed amid growing international pressure after more than 1 000 people were killed in the wake of the disputed presidential election.
On Monday, gangsters were exchanging gunfire with police just feet from makeshift tented camps, where some of the country's 300 000 displaced were still living.
In the Dandora slum - infamous for a sprawling, environmentally disastrous waste dump - 13-year-old Dorian Opio peeked out the gates of her primary school as riot police fired live bullets and teargas down alleyways. A flaming police station next door sent black smoke billowing into the air.
"I don't know if I should walk home," Opio said, fiddling with the strap on her backpack. "I think maybe I should go. All the other students left but I don't know how I'll get there."
Sect linked to beheadings
Members of the Mungiki, an outlawed sect linked to a string of beheadings, held protests in several cities across the country - including Nairobi's slums and the western town of Naivasha, which were scenes of some of the worst post-election violence in January and February.
The protesters demanded the release of their leader, Maina Njenga, from prison, and accused police of being behind the death of Njenga's wife and the gang's acting leader last week.
"We will not stop demonstrating," Joe Waiganjo of the Kenya National Youth Alliance, the political wing of the Mungiki, said.
He said the group was planning protests across the country in coming days. National police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe denied any police involvement in the killings.
"That is totally false accusations. Why do the police want to kill this woman?" he asked. "If we are interested in the wife of the criminal, we would have taken her to court."
Mungiki emerged in the 1990s, inspired by the Mau Mau rebellion against colonial rule. The group was believed to have thousands of adherents, all drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe.
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