Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki called for calm yesterday as opposition leader Raila Odinga warned that the east African nation was heading toward anarchy.
"The president appeals to all Kenyans to maintain peace," said a statement from Kibaki's office.
Odinga told reporters: "This country is drifting into a state of anarchy."
PHOTO: AFP
His comments came just hours after two gunmen shot newly elected opposition member of parliament (MP) Mugabe Were as he drove to his house in suburban Nairobi early yesterday.
"We are treating it as a murder but we are not ruling out anything, including political motives," Kenyan police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said. "We are urging everyone to remain calm."
Police fired tear gas into the compound of Were's home at unarmed mourners who had been taunting them.
Kibaki condemned the killing and appealed to Kenyans to maintain peace and avoid drawing premature conclusions. In a statement, Kibaki promised police would act swiftly to ensure the perpetrators were dealt with severely.
But Odinga told reporters that he suspected political "adversaries" of his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) had a hand in the murder.
"We are very shocked and dismayed at what has happened to our colleague," Odinga said, describing the death a "brutal assassination in cold blood."
"Of course there are lots of rumors going around. We hope and expect that investigations are going to be carried out by the law enforcement agencies, but as you can see, the country is drifting into a state of anarchy," he said.
Odinga also asked for calm, as angry opposition supporters in several cities vowed to avenge what they consider to be the first political assassination of the crisis.
"We want all our supporters to desist from any acts of thuggery, hooliganism or revenge," he said.
ODM spokesman Salim Lone also appealed for calm, saying: "This is a very dark day for our country. More than 1,000 people have been killed and now the killing of an MP takes the violence to a new level altogether."
The killing came as thousands of machete-wielding youths from both Kikuyu and Luo tribes continued to hunt each other down in western Kenya's Rift Valley, burning homes, blocking roads with blazing tires and clashing with police who appeared overwhelmed.
Outside Naivasha Country Club, police were trying to rescue hundreds of Luos from a mob of Kikuyus armed with machetes and clubs inset with nails.
``We're trapped,'' said Rose Achieng, who fled with her two children when looters ransacked her home Sunday.
She and hundreds others had sought refuge next to the police station, beside the road outside the country club.
Police, apparently worried they could not protect them, started ferrying them in trucks to the town's walled prison compound, where more than 1,000 refugees already had gathered.
``If you stay we will kill you,'' Kikuyus yelled.
Two Kenyan military helicopters fired on above armed crowds terrorizing refugees. The helicopters dive-bombed the crowd several times, firing what police said were rubber bullets at a mob of about 600 people brandishing machetes.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone was hit.
Police also fired tear gas and live rounds to disperse at least 100 protesters in Kisumu..
In horrific images round the Rift Valley, one mother lay in a pool of blood in a Nakuru shack, as her baby cried on a chair nearby. In Naivasha, a man entered a clinic with an arrow in his head.
Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan is spearheading attempts to mediate between the government and the opposition.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees