22 people killed in Kenya clashes

Nairobi, Kenya: Fierce fighting over land killed 22 people and left 200 homes burned in Kenya's troubled western Rift Valley, officials said on Sunday in yet another eruption of ethnic clashes following the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki.

Renewed ethnic fighting also broke out in Nairobi's Mathare slum, where several homes were set ablaze during several hours of running battles between Kikuyu and Luo ethnic groups, said resident Boniface Shikami.

President Mwai Kibaki is Kikuyu and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who charges Kibaki stole the December 27 election, is a Luo.

A reporter saw the body of one man who was beaten to death in Mathare - a Luo who was riding his bicycle through a group of Kikuyus.

Another staggered past, blood streaming from the stump of his arm which had been cut off with a machete. The arm was taken by a group of youths and placed on top of a pile of stones barricading an alleyway.

Resident Moses Ogolla said he saw four bodies being put into a police vehicle that morning with deep machete cuts.

"I think it was a gang who attacked them because some bodies, the head had six, seven, eight cuts on it," he said. Ogolla said he believed the victims were Luo because he heard the families conversing in the Luo language.

"The Luo guys say they are going to revenge this," he said.

Notices

Shikami said Luos in his street had received notices warning them to leave by nightfall or risk attack.

Filipe Rebeiro of aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, said his organisation had treated 10 people for machete and axe wounds on Sunday morning.

In the Rift Valley, around the Catholic Kipkelion Monastery about 300 kilometres northwest of Nairobi, Kalenjin people native to the area fought Kisii and Kikuyu settlers with machetes, swords and bows and arrows. The Kalenjin generally support the opposition party.

A local reporter at the scene saw 17 people who had died from machete and arrow wounds and five shot by police, who appeared to have quelled the violence but still were recovering bodies.

The death toll was also confirmed by district administrator Aden Alhake Edward Ndirangu, who said two of his houses were razed. "I am not sure about their safety. We fled as they were looting and torching my homes," he said.