Two protesters were shot dead by police in the Kenyan capital Wednesday as unrest broke out after opposition claims of massive rigging in an election that President Uhuru Kenyatta looked certain to win. An AFP photographer saw one of the victims, a young man with a massive gunshot wound to the head, while a senior police officer confirmed two had been killed in the flashpoint slum of Mathare.
"They were part of a group that was protesting in the area and officers were sent to quell the chaos," the officer said on condition of anonymity. "We are told many of them were also thieves who took advantage and could not even obey the police. Two have been fatally wounded." Japheth Koome, police chief for Nairobi, said the two who were killed had tried to "attack our officers with pangas (machetes) and that's when the officers opened fire on them."
An AFP photographer saw a bloodied machete lying on the ground at the scene of the unrest. Police fired teargas - and in some cases live bullets into the air - to disperse several protests, which erupted in opposition strongholds in Nairobi as well as the western city of Kisumu after Odinga claimed a massive hacking attack had manipulated electronic tallying results.
Kenyatta looked to have an unassailable lead, according to unofficial results streamed onto the election commission (IEBC) website, handing him 54 percent compared to Odinga's 44.7 percent, with votes from over 96 percent of polling stations counted. The bloodshed comes a decade after a disputed poll, which Odinga lost to former president Mwai Kibaki, led to two months of clashes that left 1,100 people dead and 600,000 displaced.
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