80 people were killed in Baghdad yesterday. Members of the messianic cult, which call themselves the Supporters of the Mahdi, went into crowds in Basra and in Nasiriya and began firing at the Iraqi security forces and the crowd who had gathered to worship Shiite Islam’s most important Holiday.
Police said the cult’s leader, Ahmed Hassan, who called himself “the Yemeni,” was killed along with nearly 50 of his followers in the fighting in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city. About 60 gunmen were arrested and large quantities of weapons were seized from a mosque linked to the group, said the Basra police chief, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Kareem Khalaf.
About 20 gunmen were killed in Nasiriya, police said. At least 10 policemen in Nasiriya and four in Basra also died, and at least 90 people were injured in the two cities, they said. [Full Story]
In Nairobi, Kenya, 12 people were killed yesterday in the ongoing clash between police and protesters, making it a total of nearly 24 deaths in three days. Overall more than 600 people have died in these types of incidents since President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner in a case of fraud, in December.
The deadliest skirmishes occurred in the Nairobi slum of Kibera, where angry youths tore up railway lines that run through the restive district, connecting the Kenyan coastline to Uganda.Police, who have been criticized for their heavy-handed response to the protests, swarmed into the rain-soaked Kibera slum in the late afternoon, firing tear gas and live ammunition.
Witnesses said four to seven people were killed, including a teenage girl, apparently a bystander.
Subscribe to our RSS Feed And checkout our coffee competition to win a $30 gift voucher to your favourite coffee shop : click here“They were just firing indiscriminately and lobbing tear gas at any people in their way,” said John Lallo, 62, an unemployed resident of Kibera. “I can’t even say that this is unusual. They use force like that every time there is a crisis.”
In the coastal city of Mombasa, police battled scores of Muslim protesters as they exited a mosque after Friday prayers. Four people reportedly were shot, one fatally.
Government officials defended the police, saying they were not dealing with peaceful marchers, but with angry young men who at times have stoned them, burned homes and looted businesses. [Full Story]
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