In pictures: Mungiki clashes

Kenyan police and paramilitary units are conducting a major crackdown on the illegal Mungiki sect in a slum in the capital city, Nairobi.

Mathare slum has been sealed off for a third day while they search for guns and sect members.

Armed police set their dogs on residents who fled while they conducted house-to-house searches.

And dozens of youths and women suspected to be members or sympathisers were bundled into police trucks and driven to police stations across Nairobi.

Police forced local people to lie on the ground as they made arrests and said they had shot dead at least 12 people on Thursday...

...after at least 21 suspected sect members were killed by police earlier this week.

The operation follows the discovery of several beheaded corpses in the Mathare slum and elsewhere in the country - blamed on Mungiki members.

Some of those brutally killed have included policemen.

The slum is seen as a stronghold of the Mungiki, a sect formed by ethnic Kikuyus, which runs protection rackets and claims links to top politicians.

Back

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Next