Kenyan police fire teargas at funeral

24 Jan, 2008

Police fired teargas to disperse stone-throwing youths outside an opposition funeral on Wednesday while former UN boss Kofi Annan tried to negotiate an end to Kenya's bloody political crisis.
Several teargas canisters landed in the large football field in Nairobi where coffins were laid out and opposition leader Raila Odinga was winding up an oration for 28 slum-dwellers he said were shot by police. Pro-opposition youths then set fire to a nearby post office.
"This is a war between the people of Kenya and a small clique of very bloodthirsty people who want to cling on to power at all costs," Odinga told the crowd of mourners as violence was erupting on a road outside. Annan held talks with Odinga after meeting the speaker of parliament and Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni - also in the country to try and mediate - before planned talks later with President Mwai Kibaki.

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