KISUMU, Kenya (Agencies)
The death toll from five days of post presidential election riots in Kenya has soared, with the credibility of the poll being questioned by Britain, Canada, the United States and the European Union's election observers.
At least 66 bodies were discovered in Kenya following another night of police raids and tribal killings, police said Tuesday, bringing the toll of bloodshed to 251.
Forty-eight bodies, most of them with fresh bullet wounds, were brought to the morgue in the western Kenya city of Kisumu, a mortuary attendant said Tuesday.
"They brought in 48 bodies, including three children, 44 had fresh bullet wounds, four were hacked with machetes," the mortuary attendant said.
Police raids and tribal clashes over the past two days had already claimed 53 lives in Kisumu, the country's third city and a stronghold of defeated presidential challenger Raila Odinga.
"In total since yesterday, we have 101 bodies lying in the mortuary," the attendant added amid fears more victims would be discovered.
In Kisumu's Kondele slum, "there are three uncollected bodies lying on the ground," John Otieno, a local resident, told reporters on the scene.
"Police went on a killing spree overnight. They have been shooting indiscriminately at people," he added.
At least 18 other people were killed overnight in the nearby town of Eldoret and its surroundings, police said.
President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner on Sunday but Odinga rejected the results, accusing the government of rigging the counting process, and called for peaceful mass action.
The violence is the worst Kenya has seen in its cities since the failed 1982 coup against authoritarian former president Daniel Arap Moi. |
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Ban on TV reports Meanwhile, the government has enforced a ban on live television broadcasts related to the election in what it says is an effort to contain the violence.
"We know there are skirmishes in many parts of the country. We are fully cracking down and fully responding to every situation," police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told AFP.
Washington initially congratulated Kibaki on his re-election but the U.S. State Department on Monday withdrew the endorsement of the vote count made 24 hours earlier.
"We do have serious concerns, as I know others do, about irregularities in the vote count, and we think it's important that those concerns... be resolved through constitutional and legal means," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.
"I'm not offering congratulations to anybody," he added. |
