Nairobi: Kenyan police battled protesters in blazing slums on Monday after disputed elections returned President Mwai Kibaki to power and triggered turmoil that a local TV station said had killed at least 124 people.
Fatal riots convulsed the nation, from opposition strongholds in the west near the Ugandan border to Nairobi's shanty-towns and the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean Coast.
Broadcaster KTN said by mid-afternoon the toll had reached at least 124.
Much fighting pitched Luos, who back defeated opposition leader Raila Odinga, against Kibaki's ethnic Kikuyu group.
In the western town of Kisumu, a hotbed of opposition support, 21 bodies lay in and around a hospital mortuary, witnesses said. Most had gunshot wounds.
In Nairobi's Mathare slum, police threatened to shoot people coming out of their homes, witnesses said.
Odinga called for a mass rally on Thursday in Nairobi's main Uhuru Park, named for the word freedom in Swahili.
Timeline: Tumultuous politics
- December 27, 2002: Former Vice President Kibaki, candidate of the opposition National Rainbow Coalition, wins a presidential election on pledges to deliver a new constitution in 100 days. The victory ends Daniel arap Moi's 24-year rule and the Kenya African National Union's four decades in power.
- November 22, 2003 - International Monetary Fund resumes lending after three-year gap, saying the new government has shown commitment to end corruption.
- December 21 - Moi is granted immunity from prosecution on corruption charges.
- March 15, 2004 - Government withdraws from a conference convened to write a new constitution after most delegates vote to trim presidential powers.
- February 7, 2005 - John Githongo quits as Kenya's first anti-corruption adviser, a blow to the fight against graft.
- July 22 - Parliament votes to keep a strong presidency in a proposed new constitution. The vote leads to deepening divisions in the ruling coalition and triggers rioting in the capital.
- November 22 - Kibaki suffers humiliating defeat when voters reject the new constitution in a referendum; he fires his government the next day.
- December 9 - Twenty-six of 29 ministers are finally sworn in after Kibaki's struggle to form a new cabinet. Three refuse to appear although two of them later reverse that decision.
- February 1, 2006 - Finance Minister David Mwiraria resigns over a multi-million dollar corruption scandal, says he is innocent.
- June 3 - Key ministers from the ruling coalition break away to form a new party, the National Rainbow Coalition-Kenya.
- August 22 - Government agrees to opposition calls for parts of the constitution to be amended ahead of 2007 elections.
- September 16, 2007 - Kibaki announces candidacy on the ticket of Party of National Unity, created as his re-election vehicle.
- December 27 - Voters elect a new president and parliament. Most opinion polls give a lead to Kibaki's opposition rival Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement.
- December 30 - Kibaki wins close-run election by the narrow margin of 230,000 votes and is hurriedly sworn in.
- December 31 - The government floods the streets with security forces and keeps a ban on live TV broadcasts after riots convulse the nation with media reports saying at least 124 people have died.
- Reuters
