Dozens Dead In New Kenya Election Violence

Electoral workers count votes in the European Fiscal Treaty Referendum at the City West Hotel, Dublin, Ireland, Friday, June 1, 2012. Saying yes could mean dooming Ireland to more long, hard years of austerity. But saying no could mean national bankruptcy next year. Ireland's debt-burdened voters confronted an existential dilemma Thursday as they decided in a referendum whether to ratify the European Union's deficit-fighting treaty, a measure backed by Germany as a confidence-building measure but criticized by many economists as exactly the wrong kind of medicine for countries drowning in red ink. Results come Friday. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison) / Peter Morrison

Gangs armed with machetes and bows and arrows burned and hacked to death members of a rival tribe in western Kenya Sunday, as the death toll from the latest explosion of violence over disputed presidential elections rose to 69.

Some 55 bodies were counted Sunday at the morgue in Nakuru, the provincial capital where ethnic clashes erupted Thursday night and continued until Saturday. Bodies continued arriving Sunday, said a morgue attendant who spoke on condition of anonmyity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Houses were blazing in the tourist gateway town of Naivasha, 55 miles northwest of Nairobi, where at least nine people were killed, according to the count of a local reporter. A local newspaper reporter saw another five bodies Sunday in two slums on the outskirts of Nakuru, called Kaptembwa and Sewage.

The latest deaths raise the toll to nearly 800 killed in ethnic violence and clashes with police since President Mwai Kibaki was declared winner of Dec. 27 balloting that international and local observers say had a rigged tally. Some 255,000 people have been forced from their homes.

In Naivasha, groups from Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe set ablaze the homes of Luo rivals in the center of the town. Police, apparently overwhelmed, did not intervene.

Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who claims he won the election, remain far apart on how to resolve the crisis, the worst the country has suffered since its 1963 independence from Britain.

Kibaki has said he is open to direct talks with Odinga, but that his position as president is not negotiable. Odinga says Kibaki must step down and new elections are the only way to bring peace.

On Sunday, Odinga was meeting with former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the latest international mediator attempting to bring the two sides together.

Opposition spokesman Salim Lone said they were asked to name three negotiators for the talks, which he said he would hopefully start "within a week."

Annan toured trouble spots Saturday in the western Rift Valley, which includes Naivasha, and alluded to underlying causes of the conflict, including decades-old resentment of Kikuyus' domination of politics and the economy, and old grudges over land between different ethnic groups.

"We cannot accept the pattern every five years these sorts of incidents take place and no one is held to account," Annan said. "Let's not kid ourselves this is an electoral problem. This is much broader."

While ethnic clashes have accompanied past Kenyan elections, the scale of the violence this year has been far worse. It has mainly pitted other ethnic groups, which support the opposition because they feel marginalized, against Kibaki's Kikuyu people.

Kikuyus were the main victims in the initial eruption of violence, with hundreds killed and more than half of those driven from their homes belonging to Kibaki's tribe. Now it appears they are on the war path.

The crisis has destroyed the East African nation's image as a peaceful haven in a region rife with conflict.
By Elizabeth A. Kennedy

[gaaru-2009]

Those are 250,000 livelihoods destroyed. Put in another way, those are 250,000 idlers created. We see the women and children in the Red Cross Rations queues and wonder where are the men ? Hpefully not scheming counter attacks as the numbers keep rising and all because one person cannot accept defeat in polls.

[runningralph]

Kenyans are great long distance runners. Their gait is like that of a deer or gazelle. They seem to just barely touch the ground when they run. It was said they could run 50 miles, fight a battle, and run back home. They were so proud and happy with uhuru. It''s a shame to see Kenya go down by tribal conflicts. Tribal warfare can slide quickly into genocide.
Americans of any ancestry should be glad they live in the US, especially African-Americans.