New MP murder rekindles Kenya violence

An opposition MP has been shot dead by a policeman in Kenya’s Rift Valley today, the second to be killed this week as the country’s violent slide into chaos continues.

David Too was killed in “a crime of passion” for having an affair with the officer’s girlfriend, national police chief Hussein Ali said.

Mr Too’s Orange Democratic Movement party said it was an assassination plot.

The MP was shot at a road block as he drove from Nairobi to the western city of Eldoret by car.

“This is part of an evil scheme” to rob the party of its majority in parliament, ODM secretary-general Anyang Nyongo said.

The ODM has 99 parliament seats compared to 43 for President Mwai Kibaki’s party.

MP Mugabe Were was shot dead as he drove to his house in suburban Nairobi on Tuesday, setting off more violence in the capital’s slums and in western regions.

Today, angry Eldoret residents marched on the police station as word of Mr Too’s death spread. They fled when officers fired into the air.

Within minutes of the news reaching another western town, the opposition stronghold of Kisumu, gangs of men armed themselves with machetes and set up burning barricades. Businesses shut down and workers began to flee from the town centre.

Western Kenya has seen some of the worst of the post-election violence, much of it pitting other tribes against Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu people, long resented for their dominance of Kenyan politics and business.

Hundreds of Kikuyus have been killed, and members of the group account for more than half of the 300,000 chased from their homes, most in the Rift Valley. Kikuyus also have been on the attack.

But police said Mr Too’s death was not linked to the political turmoil. Eldoret Deputy Police Chief Gabriel Kuya said the traffic officer discovered that his girlfriend was having an affair with Mr Too, and when he saw them both in the car, chased them on his motorcycle.

“He drove toward the side of the woman and shot her in the stomach twice. Her partner pleaded with the officer not to kill her but he turned his pistol on him instead, hitting him four times in the head,” he said.

The killing came as negotiators for Mr Kibaki and opposition rival Raila Odinga met for a first day of talks to try to resolve the country’s deadly election dispute.

“The mood is serious. They can feel the weight of the nation on their shoulders,” said a spokesman for the mediator, former UN. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Mr Odinga has said he wants a new election, while Mr Kibaki has made clear he will not negotiate his position as president.

Mr Annan has said it could take a month to resolve the immediate dispute over the election and a year to map out a plan for dealing with decades-old ethnic animosities and land disputes underlying the violence.

At the African Union summit in neighbouring Ethiopia today, chairman Alpha Konare told an audience that included Kibaki that “Kenya is a country that was a hope for the continent.

"Today, if you look at Kenya you see violence on the streets. We are even talking about ethnic cleansing, we are even talking about genocide. We cannot sit with our hands folded.”