Teargas used against Kenyans protesting slum murder

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Kenyan police fired teargas to disperse a crowd protesting against the overnight murder of four people in a slum in Nairobi.

Parts of the city were gripped by tension since Friday when at least five people were killed in violence involving the police and opposition supporters accompanying their leader Raila Odinga after a trip abroad.

Japheth Koome, police commander in the city, said investigations started after four bodies were found in the Mathare Area Four slum on Sunday.
“We went there and found bodies with injuries,” he told a news conference, describing the murders as criminal rather than ethnic-driven violence.

The violence took place a day before the Supreme Court rules on two cases seeking to nullify the re-election of President Uhuru Kenyatta in a repeat election held last month.

Odinga, who successfully petitioned against Kenyatta’s initial victory in the August 8 vote and subsequently boycotted the repeat poll, visited the scene of the murders and accused government of being behind the killing.
“Those who are doing these acts are the ones who already lost and want to hold onto power by force but we will remove them using the power of the people,” he told a crowd of supporters.

Police fired teargas and used water cannons to disperse protesters until calm was restored in the afternoon.

The broadcast industry regulator, Communications Authority of Kenya, said it banned live broadcasts of political rallies, after all the main TV stations showed hours of live footage of the chaos that greeted Odinga’s return.

A source at the authority told Reuters the ban was to help manage the tension in the country.
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