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50 killed as mob sets fire to Kenyan church
A mob has torched a church sheltering hundreds of Kenyans fleeing election violence, killing at least 50 people, many of them children, as the country’s disputed presidential election set off a bloody convulsion threatening what had been East Africa’s most stable and prosperous democracy.
The church fire in Eldoret, some 300 kilometers (185 miles) from the capital, killed at least 50 people, said a Red Cross volunteer who counted the bodies and helped the wounded.
A reporter and a senior security official said the fire at the Kenya Assemblies of God Pentecostal church, where 200 members of Mr Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe had taken refuge in fear of their lives, had been deliberately started by a gang of youths, Reuters reports.
The local reporter who visited the smouldering wreckage of the church in the fertile Rift Valley Province told Reuters he saw up to 15 bodies crammed in a corner. “They were charred. I could not look at the scene twice,” he said from the scene, 8 km (5 miles) from Eldoret.
“Some youths came to the church. They fought with the boys who were guarding it, but they were overpowered and the youths set fire to the church,” he said.
I don’t believe this is a straightforward matter of tribal warfare and ethnic cleansing as some of the newspapers will have it. There are factions and corruption and rivalry between tribes which have a strong identity but I believe presenting the situation as a Kikuyu v Luo power struggle is trivialising the reason for bloodshed which is tragic for a beautiful country of which I have happy memories and where my church has connections.
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