Kenya's slum residents angered by police brutality

By Nick Tattersall

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Pastor Isaac Mujete was talking with women and children from his church in Kenya's biggest slum on Thursday when police opened fire, spraying bullets as residents ran for cover among the tin-roofed shacks.

One round grazed his arm, tearing his shirtsleeve before ripping into the lower back of another pastor, Francis Ivayo, as the two churchmen tried to protect children in Nairobi's Kibera shanty town, home to up to a million people.

"When they came they just started shooting any old how. They could not reason with anyone. They told us we can do anything to you, even shoot you, we don't care," Mujete said from Ivayo's bedside after bringing him to the nearby Masaba Hospital.

"Young kids were there, we could not just run away. These were members of our church. We were trying to safeguard young children," he said.

As he spoke, one of two other young men brought in with Ivayo died in the next room from a gunshot wound to the neck.

"He was shot at close range. He was shot through the front of the neck. He was facing whoever shot him," said resident surgeon Dr Eric Ataya.

More than 600 people have died in Kenya, long east Africa's most stable and promising economy, during protests in the past three weeks against President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election. Many have died at the hands of the security forces.

In the muddy streets of Kibera, a sprawling warren of wooden shacks, frustration at Kibaki's alleged stealing of the vote is giving way to anger at the tactics used by the security forces.