Kenyan police killed 21 people during a crackdown on Kenya's Mungiki criminal gang after its members killed two officers, a police spokesman said on Tuesday.
Police with dogs and assault rifles stormed Nairobi's Mathare slum, a stronghold of the outlawed gang behind a series of killings and beheadings of ordinary citizens and increasingly government officials.
Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said the Mathare operation, which began on Monday night, had captured seven suspects, besides those who were shot dead. "The ones I can confirm are 21, according to the reports I am receiving from the ground. The police have restrained themselves because of our concern for human life," Kiraithe said.
One Mathare resident, who declined to be identified, said police had stormed through houses looking for suspects. Local police in Mathare who spoke on condition of anonymity said the toll would likely rise because of the difficulty of finding the dead in the congested slum.
In a separate incident, police said four members of a family were hacked to death in a village in central Kenya by suspected Mungiki members, in an apparent warning against talking to the authorities about the group.