January 17, 2008	Thursday	Muharram 07, 1429

KISUMU (Kenya), Jan 16: Kenyan police fought hundreds of protesters in trouble spots across the country on Wednesday, killing two as the opposition defied a ban on rallies against President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed re-election.

From the western towns of Kisumu and Eldoret to the capital Nairobi and the coast, security forces clashed with gangs of youths, some of whom set up roadblocks and burnt tyres.

Police in Kisumu, an opposition stronghold, fired in the air and used teargas and batons to disperse a 1,000-strong crowd. Two men were shot dead, witnesses said. A Reuters cameraman saw a corpse in the street, with bullet wounds in the back and side.

“We are receiving more gunshot victims,” said a doctor at a Kisumu hospital who asked not be named. “The violence is still raging,” he said as a man on a stretcher with a bullet wound in his chest gasped in pain.

More than 600 people have died and 250,000 been left homeless by the turmoil since Kibaki was sworn in following a Dec 27 ballot that the leader of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), Raila Odinga, says was rigged.

In Nairobi, police chased protesters through the central business district, firing teargas and live rounds in the air.

Three youths were shot in the back of the leg as they tried to run from officers in the city’s sprawling Kibera slum, one of Africa’s biggest, a hospital administrator said.

“It was so crowded, a very narrow place. I was trying to escape and I got a bullet in my leg,” one of the three, 18-year-old student Oscar Junior, said from his hospital bed.

Deep in Kibera’s muddy alleys, women and children coughed and spluttered as police fired teargas to drive back crowds.

OPPOSITION DEFIANT: ODM leaders tried to lead some demonstrators to Nairobi’s central Uhuru (Freedom) Park — but also faced teargas.

“We are determined to continue with the fight,” one of Odinga’s top allies, William Ruto, told reporters. “We will not allow Kibaki to make this country a dictatorship.”

Police also dispersed several hundred protesters in Eldoret, in the Rift Valley area worst hit by violence, while officers in the coastal resort of Mombasa battled smaller crowds.

Kenya’s crisis has dented its democratic credentials, angered donors, scared off tourists and hurt one of Africa’s most promising economies.

Police have banned three days of protests called by the ODM.

Shopkeepers boarded windows, traffic came to a standstill in parts of Nairobi, and many Kenyans stayed at home.

Kibaki, 76, has solidified his position by naming key ministers and calling parliament. But the opposition got a boost late on Tuesday by winning the post of speaker in the assembly.

Odinga, 63, a former minister in Kibaki’s cabinet and one-time political prisoner, may use that leverage to paralyse government business.—Reuters