The latest clashes in western Kenya have left dozens dead, police said Saturday, a day after the feuding political sides agreed to a framework to try to end weeks of violence.
Despite the deal inked Friday, accusations continued to fly between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who claims he was robbed of the presidency in the disputed December 27 elections.
Thirty-four people have died in fresh clashes, police said Saturday, including in western Nyanza province after fighting with machetes and poisoned arrows, and in clashes in Ainamoi, the home village of a slain opposition MP.
The deaths came after former UN secretary general Kofi Annan oversaw the signing of a first joint document between representatives of Kibaki and Odinga since the disputed elections set off the bloodshed.
The deal marked out a joint roadmap to end, within two weeks, unrest that has claimed nearly 1,000 lives since the presidential polls. The crisis has severely shaken the formerly stable east African nation, a refuge for many people displaced by neighbouring conflicts.
"You have lost already too much in terms of national image, in terms of economic interests," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said during a one-day visit to Kenya on Friday. "What I'd like to ask you is to look beyond these individual interests, look beyond the party lines."
The new roadmap said both sides would address the growing humanitarian crisis caused by the unrest, which has displaced up to 300,000 people. But it was unclear how political issues would be addressed, saying only that "its resolution may require adjustments to the current constitutional, legal and institutional frameworks".
The deal came only hours after Kibaki made an uncompromising speech in Ethiopia in which he stuck to positions already rejected by the opposition, including a call for its grievance over the election results to be taken to court. He also accused the opposition of instigating the violence. Odinga rejected the claims Saturday and said Kibaki was undermining the Annan-led talks.
"President Kibaki's comments in Addis Ababa undermined the mediation talks," he told a news conference in Nairobi, repeating that he believed that the courts were loyal to Kibaki. He said his Orange Democratic Movement "cannot in any way be held responsible for what is happening in the country," he added.
"He (Kibaki) is trying to cover up the ethnic cleansing that is occurring in his own backyard in central Kenya." Both sides face the challenge of extinguishing a growing flare-up of latent ethnic clashes, economic and land disputes. They have traded accusations of using armed gangs to provoke further tensions.
Police said Saturday that 34 people had died in fresh violence in western Kenya, bringing the toll in the past 24 hours to 44. Ethnic fighting between villagers armed with bows and arrows, spears and machetes has ballooned in the region since the killing of local opposition MP David Kimutai Too in Eldoret on Thursday.
Odinga said the lawmaker's murder, and that of opposition MP Melitus Mugabe Were on Tuesday in Nairobi, were "part of a plot" to reduce his party's majority in parliament. A police crackdown increased the death toll of new clashes. "Seven were killed in Kapsoit" by police, a local commander told AFP.
A total of 16 have been hacked to death or shot with poisoned arrows in Nyamira in western Nyanza province since Friday, another police commander told AFP, adding that nine others were killed in nearby localities.
Meanwhile, local police commander Japheth Daido said two people had died overnight in Ainamoi, Too's home village, where thousands went on the rampage Friday, killing a policeman. He said eight others had also died there Friday.
Police also said they had shot dead a demonstrator in the western opposition stronghold of Kisumu on Friday. Meanwhile, arsonists burnt down a church overnight in the north-western town of Eldoret, police said, near where another church was razed on January 1, killing 35 people sheltering inside. The World Health Organisation warned Friday that hundreds of thousands of Kenyans who have been forced from their homes lack proper health care and face a growing risk of disease and sexual violence.
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