Ocili News

• Story Highlights
• Kenyan police say officers not given shoot to kill orders amid violent clashes
• Government says 650 dead after disputed vote; opposition says 1,000 dead
• U.S. diplomat says violence in western Kenya is “clear ethnic cleansing”
• Ex-U.N. chief Kofi Annan holds talks with Kenyan president, opposition leader

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNN) — Kenyan police say that — despite political disputes that have plunged this once stable country into chaos — its officers have not been given shoot to kill orders.

Paramilitary police chase a group of Kikuyu men during ethnic clashes near Nairobi on Wednesday.

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var CNN_ArticleChanger = new CNN_imageChanger(’cnnImgChngr’,'/2008/WORLD/africa/01/30/kenya.violence/imgChng/p1-0.init.exclude.html’,2,1); //CNN.imageChanger.load(’cnnImgChngr’,'imgChng/p1-0.exclude.html’); Some media organizations reported that the order had been issued to stem the tide of violence that has swept over the East African country since the disputed December 27 election — and one that shows no signs of abating.

But police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told CNN Wednesday his department had not issued a shoot-to-kill order but rather it had instructed officers “as much as possible to disable to effect detention” rather than kill.

The law, Kiraithe said, allows an officer to fire his gun if armed men do not comply with orders to lay down their weapons.

Kiraithe said that law enforcement received fresh instructions on when they can legally kill because the government wants to ensure the officers are neither accused of standing by or charged with homicide during violent confrontations. Watch as CNN’s Nic Robertson describes unrest in western Kenya’s Naivasha »

The government, Kiraithe said, wants “trouble makers” to understand they cannot act with impunity, attacking, burning and killing, that they cannot hide behind political parties.

The spasm of political violence that has crippled Kenya erupted soon after the December elections, when the opposition Orange Democratic Party accused President Mwai Kibaki of rigging the vote to win re-election in a race against its leader Raila Odinga. It soon took on ethnic overtones.

More than 860 people have been killed and more than 200,000 displaced in the turmoil, the Red Cross said. The Red Cross has put the number at 863. There was no fresh violence reported in Kenya Wednesday.

The United States has said it will consider imposing sanctions against members of the Kenyan government and opposition figures who are instigating the violence.

Earlier Wednesday, an American diplomat has described the violence in Kenya’s Rift Valley as “clear ethnic cleansing” aimed at chasing out members of the Kikuyu tribe who are loyal to President Kibaki

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However, U.S. envoy Jendayi Frazer said she did not believe the ethnic clashes that have brought Kenya to its knees following disputed elections last month could be classed as genocide.

The violence she saw this month while visiting the Rift Valley, where Luos people are fighting Kikuyus, “was clear ethnic cleansing,” she told reporters at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa on Wednesday.

“The aim originally was not to kill, it was to cleanse, it was to push them out of the region,” she said, according to The Associated Press.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday pleaded with Kenya’s government to take “extraordinary measures” to protect civilians hours after an opposition lawmaker was killed outside his home.

“Kenya, which has long been a stable and peaceful country, today is in turmoil with innocent men, women and children being hounded and killed,” Annan told Kenya’s National Assembly before heading into talks with Kibaki and Odinga.

Tags: CNN, Kenya, Kofi Annan, Nairobi, opposition leader, police, president, violence

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