Pol's Death Sparks Kenya Battles

Odinga warns nation is slipping into anarchy
By Zach Samalin,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 29, 2008 3:00 AM CST
Pol's Death Sparks Kenya Battles
Kenyan men from the Luo tribe armed with machetes and rocks enforce a makeshift roadblock, searching passing vehicles for Kikuyus trying to flee the town in order to kill them, on the main road to the Ugandan border near the airport in Kisumu, Kenya, Monday, Jan. 28, 2008. In Kisumu on Monday angry...   (Associated Press)

Army helicopters fired on crowds to protect Kenyans fleeing bloodshed and mobs torched homes and people as violence escalated today in the wake of the killing of an opposition politician, the BBC reports. At least four people were killed in a Nairobi slum after a member of opposition leader Raila Odinga's party was apparently killed in his home nearby in the ethnic violence ripping apart the nation. 

Helicopters fired on Kikuyus attacking Luos trying to flee the town of Naivasha, after Luos stopped and torched cars of Kikuyus fleeing Kisumu. Thousands of people have fled Rift Valley towns where more than 100 people have been killed since Friday in violence first set off by Kenya's controversial presidential elections last month. President Mwai Kibaki has appealed for calm, but Odinga warned that the country was slipping into anarchy. (More Kenya stories.)

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