Deadly protests amid claim of vote rigging
Two protesters were shot dead by police in the Kenyan capital yesterday as unrest broke out after opposition claims of massive rigging in an election that President Uhuru Kenyatta looked certain to win.
Japheth Koome, police chief for Nairobi, said the two who were killed had tried to "attack our officers with pangas (machetes) and that's when the officers opened fire on them."
Police fired teargas -- and in some cases live bullets into the air -- to disperse several protests, which erupted in opposition strongholds in Nairobi as well as the western city of Kisumu after Odinga claimed a massive hacking attack had manipulated electronic tallying results.
Kenyatta looked to have an unassailable lead, according to unofficial results streamed onto the election commission (IEBC) website, handing him 54 percent compared to Odinga's 44.7 percent, with votes from over 96 percent of polling stations counted.
The bloodshed comes a decade after a disputed poll, which Odinga lost to former president Mwai Kibaki, led to two months of clashes that left 1,100 people dead and 600,000 displaced.
It is the second time the two men have faced off in a presidential election, a dynastic rivalry that has lasted more than half a century since their fathers Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Odinga went from allies in the struggle for independence to bitter rivals.
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