Nairobi: At least 16 people were killed as violence erupted following the announcement of the re-election of Uhuru Kenyatta as the president of Kenya in the disputed poll results. Seven people have been killed in the country's flashpoint west, police sources said. The sources said that three bodies were found in Kisumu, one in Homa Bay, one in Migori and two in Siaya. “These people were killed in confrontations with police," said an officer. "We haven't had any problems since Sunday night. The area is calm but we are still maintaining our presence in the hotspots which are prone to chaos just to ensure calm returns." Angry opposition supporters took to the streets immediately after Kenyatta was declared the victor. Opposition leader Raila Odinga, whose party has rejected the results as a "charade" and claimed that the election was rigged. Residents of Nairobi slums, and in the western city of Kisumu, threw stones at police and burned tyres, while officers responded with tear gas and in some cases, live ammunition.
Post-election violence in 2007 resulted in 1,200 people killed and 600,000 displaced. The election commission announced its official results giving 55-year-old Kenyatta another five years in power after securing 54.3 per cent of votes cast. Odinga's NASA coalition rejected the results even before they were announced, saying that the election commission's systems had been hacked, that the conduct of the count was irregular and that foreign observers who gave the poll a clean chit were biased. However, the main monitoring group, ELOG, which had 8,300 observers on the ground, said its parallel vote tally conformed with the official outcome.
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