No bodies found in suspected mass grave in Kenya: police

Nairobi: Kenyan police have found no bodies during the excavation of a suspected mass grave in the troubled Tana River region, where recent ethnic clashes have left over 100 dead, officials said on Thursday.

“No bodies have been found there,” regional police chief Aggrey Adoli said, after a team of pathologists and grave diggers dug up the remote site that was discovered on Monday, adding that only part of one rotten human limb was found.

There was no clear explanation for why police had thought the site contained several bodies believed to have been killed in the recent violence, with Adoli admitting the situation was “strange”.

He suggested the site may have been “tampered with” and that bodies believed to have been buried were removed following the grave’s discovery.

“The appearance of the area and the heavy stench of rotting flesh pointed towards the existence of a grave,” he said.

Violence between the groups erupted in mid-August, pitting the Pokomo farming community against their Orma pastoralist neighbours, leading to a series of vicious reprisal killings and attacks.

The two communities have clashed in the past — violence that has often been attributed to disputes over water and grazing rights.

But the scale and intensity of recent killings — with women and children hacked to death or torched in their huts - has shocked many and locals say politicians are fuelling the violent surge.

Last week, Dhadho Godhana, assistant livestock minister and member of parliament for Galole in the Tana River delta, was charged in court with incitement to violence.

More than 1,000 paramilitary police have been deployed to the region in an effort to stem further attacks.

The latest clashes have evoked the large-scale ethnic violence that erupted in the aftermath of Kenya’s disputed 2007 polls, when blood-letting rocked a country long thought to have been among the region’s most stable.

Some observers fear a surge in violence ahead of elections due in March 2013.