Massacre at church, Kenyans burned alive
January 2nd, 2008 by CD
My heart goes out to the families and victims of this massacre.
A mob torched a Kenyan church on Tuesday, killing villagers cowering inside, as the death toll from ethnic riots triggered by President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed re-election soared to nearly 200.
The opposition said around 250 people had died.
In the most grisly incident, about 30 people died when fire engulfed a church near Eldoret town where scores of Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe had taken refuge in fear of their lives.
The attack revived traumatic memories in east Africa of the slaughter in churches of tens of thousands of victims of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, and the mass suicide of hundreds of Ugandan cult members in a church fire in 2000.
Police, reporters and a senior security official said the blaze at the Kenya Assemblies of God Pentecostal church was deliberately started by a gang of youths.
Witnesses said charred bodies, including women and children, were strewn about the smouldering wreckage.
‘This is the first time in history that any group has attacked a church. We never expected the savagery to go so far,’ police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said.
Reinforcements were being rushed to the area to arrest all troublemakers ‘regardless of their status in society’, he said.
- Posted in African Affairs, Social Issues