The Kenyan police are doing "their best" to track down and bring to justice the perpetrators of weekend attacks on a slum in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, in which up to 23 people were killed and 28 others injured, according to a spokesman.
The 23 people were hacked to death in Kariobangi North slums, in the eastern suburbs of Nairobi, and 28 others admitted to hospital with serious injuries, following fighting between an outlawed traditional sect and a local vigilante group, local media organisations reported.
A group of about 300 youths from the Mungiki sect, armed with machetes, picks and axes, attacked the Kariobangi North area on Sunday night, indiscriminately assaulting residents on the streets, in pubs, and even breaking into houses, according to news reports.
The Mungiki group was reportedly avenging the killing of two sect members the previous night by a local vigilante group, which calls itself "Taliban", on suspicion that they were gangsters preparing to rob houses in the area.
Police spokesman Peter Masemo Kimanthi told IRIN on Tuesday that the force was not to blame for the Sunday night killings, saying it had done its "very best under the circumstances".
"Some people have formed a habit of blaming the police for everything," he said. "We arrested people, we took the injured to hospital and collected the bodies. Kenyans should try to understand situations. We did our best in this case," he added.
The weekend slum killings have sparked outrage among local media and human rights activists, who have linked the attacks to pre-election violence, which, they say, has dogged the country ever since the advent of multiparty politics in 1991.
The attacks took place just days after the Mungiki leadership announced that it would back KANU (the ruling Kenya African National Union party) and a number of its candidates, including Vice-President George Saitoti and Cabinet Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, for top posts during the general elections due later this year, the East African Standard reported.
In its Tuesday editorial, the paper challenged the Commissioner of Police to reveal the "political" sponsors of the Mungiki sect.
"We do not want to ask where the police were the two nights Kariobangi North was turned into a field of blood and murder, because this was not the first time the Mungiki were demonstrating the criminality of its membership... Mungiki is boasting political connections. And the public must be told why Mungiki has always been allowed to get away with murder," it stated.
The Daily Nation newspaper quoted Adolph Muchiri, Member of Parliament for the area, as saying that he had warned the police and the local administration on Sunday morning of an impending attack, but both ignored his warning.
"Why did the area appear to be completely free of police patrols even after the so-called clashes between the vigilantes and the Mungiki?" the paper asked in its editorial on Tuesday. "These thugs must be caught," it added.
A human rights activist who spoke to IRIN on condition of anonymity on Tuesday said there was a political connection to the killings, and compared the nature of the killings - which included mutilation of body parts – to the Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which close to a million people, mostly ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutus, were mutilated and killed.
"The way this thing has happened is very scary. These were ordinary citizens, but the type of killing was completely bizarre. It is frightening," he said.
"Why were the police so late? And why after the Mungiki leaders pledged to work with KANU?" he wondered.
The police have denied any political connection to the attacks, blaming the clashes on the "lawlessness" of members of the Mungiki sect and saying those responsible would be dealt with as criminals.
"We are looking at it as criminal acts committed by criminals, and we are going to deal with them at that level," Kimanthi told IRIN.
The police spokesman said that the vigilante groups, which have recently sprung up in crime-prone areas of Nairobi and other parts of Kenya, were also illegal groups, which would be treated like criminal gangs.
"I don't like the [word] vigilante. The term adds in an element of crime. Community policing is about partnerships, but vigilantes don't want to work with the police. We want situations where the police join communities to fight crime together," he said.
Julius ole Sunkuli, the cabinet minister in charge of internal security, said the government had declared an "all-out war" on thugs who were spreading terror in the city's slums, and assured the residents of Kariobangi that security would be stepped up in the area, the Daily Nation reported on Tuesday.
"Public security will not be compromised," Sunkuli added.