Revenge vow as Kenya poll crashes continue

Sporadic gunshots rang out today in a main Rift Valley city as Kenyans forced from their homes by post-election ethnic violence threatened to seek revenge.

Streets were strewn with bodies slashed by machetes and pierced by arrows.

Hundreds of homes were burned down in Nakuru, regional capital in the Rift Valley, which has seen some of the worst clashes between members of President Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe and other groups who accuse the president of stealing the December 27 elections. The Kikuyu are resented for their domination of politics and the economy.

Police took 16 charred bodies to the Nakuru mortuary today, some missing limbs. Some appeared to have other wounds as well.

Police would not say where they came from. Witnesses had reported seeing 12 bodies in Nakuru on Friday, but the complete toll was unclear.

Men at the mortuary sobbed as the bodies were taken away.

“We are planning revenge, we are searching for weapons,” said 23-year-old Njenga, who did not want his last name used for fear of reprisals.

He was among hundreds of people taking refuge at the Catholic church of Nakuru after their homes were reduced to smouldering rubble.

Nakuru, a city of 300,000, had until now been spared the political violence. Soldiers patrolled the streets after fighting broke out late on Thursday, and a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed. A barrier of rocks and wood blocked a main road today.

As the violence raged, Mr Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga remained far apart on the central question of who really won the December 27 election.

The two rivals are under international pressure to find a way to share power. But Mr Odinga said he was not interested in that option, insisting that holding new elections was the only way to restore peace. Mr Kibaki made clear he would not give up his position as head of state.

Mediator Kofi Annan of Ghana, the former UN secretary-general, was visiting trouble spots in the western Rift Valley today.

He flew by helicopter to Molo, where some 50,000 people have been chased from their homes in ethnic clashes in recent days, according to the Kenya Red Cross Society’s secretary-general, Abbas Gullet.

Half the nearby town of Total Station was burned down on Thursday night, and at least two people were killed and 50 wounded by clubs and machetes, Mr Gullet said. The area is about 100 miles (160km) north-west of the capital, Nairobi.

The police commander there, Achesa Litabalia, said Kikuyus attacked Kalenjins near Molo overnight and three of the attackers were killed.

Across the country, riots and ethnic fighting following Mr Kibaki’s disputed re-election have killed at least 685 people and forced 255,000 from their homes, with violence convulsing the capital, the coast and the western highlands.

On Thursday, Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga held talks for the first time since the election, with Mr Annan as mediator. Immediately afterwards, Mr Kibaki made clear his position as president was not negotiable.

International allies have been urging a power-sharing agreement which might create a new position of prime minister for Mr Odinga. But in an interview yesterday with National Public Radio, Mr Odinga insisted that Mr Kibaki must step down or allow new elections.

“Presidential elections... will settle this issue once and for all,” he said. “Kenya is aflame, and there’ll be no peace in Kenya until this matter is settled satisfactorily.”