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250,000 people
made homeless in Kenya
 KACHIBORA:
Armed
with bows and arrows and automatic weapons, hundreds of attackers
poured through the camp where the terrified had sought refuge. They
fired into the air, parking a brief gunbattle with police before
fleeing into the hills.
Hours later,
after the bodies of a woman and her baby shot dead were carted away,
aid agencies arrived to hand out emergency sacks of food to the
hungry masses.
It sounds like a
scene from war-ravaged
Congo
or Sudan. But this is Kenya, a country long known for welcoming
refugees from troubled neighbours not producing them. A week of post
election violence has left at least 250,000 people homeless,
shattering the East African country's image as a haven for those
fleeing conflict.
"I can't believe
it. We're refugees in our own land," said Dan Mugambi, a 35-year-old
teacher who was among about 15,000 people sheltering in a primary
school compound in the North Rift Valley
village
of
Kachibora.
"This has never happened here before." Though violence around the
country has eased over the last few days,
Kenya
is still reeling from unrest unleashed after supporters of
opposition leader Raila Odinga accused President Mwai Kibaki of
rigging the Dec 27 vote. The charges brought long-hidden ethnic
tensions to the fore, sparking mayhem in the slums of the capital,
the coast and the countryside.
Mugambi said
violence here began on New Year's Eve, when crowds of ethnic
Kalenjin youths armed with machetes and spears descended on his
village, Geta Farm, about six miles north of Kachibora. They burned
the homes of Kisii tribesmen, he said, many of whom backed Kibaki in
the poll.
9 January 2008
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