The death toll from protests in Kenya has climbed to 13, an official from the main doctors’ association told AFP on Wednesday, after anti-tax hike rallies turned violent and police opened fire at demonstrators who ransacked parliament.
The unprecedented scenes that left parts of parliament ablaze and gutted and injured scores of people on Tuesday have shocked Kenyans and prompted President William Ruto’s government to deploy the military.
The mainly youth-led rallies began mostly peacefully last week, with thousands of demonstrators marching in the capital Nairobi and across the country against the tax increases.
But tensions flared sharply on Tuesday afternoon, as police officers fired live rounds on crowds that later ransacked the parliament complex.
Hours later, Defence Minister Aden Bare Duale announced that the government had deployed the army to support the police in tackling “the security emergency” in the country.
“So far, we have at least 13 people killed, but this is not the final number,” Simon Kigondu, president of the Kenya Medical Association said, adding that he had never seen “such level of violence against unarmed people.”
“Deaths, mayhem”, read the front-page headline on the Standard newspaper, while the Daily Nation described the situation as “Pandemonium”, saying: “The foundations of the country have been shaken to the core.”
An official at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi said Wednesday that medics were treating “160 people… some of them with soft tissue injuries, some of them with bullet wounds”.
In a late-night press briefing, Ruto warned that his government would take a tough line against “violence and anarchy”, likening some of the demonstrators to “criminals”.
“It is not in order or even conceivable that criminals pretending to be peaceful protesters can reign terror against the people, their elected representatives and the institutions established under our constitution and expect to go scot-free,” he said.
A heavy police presence was deployed around parliament early on Wednesday, according to an AFP reporter, the smell of tear gas still in the air.
A policeman standing in front of the broken barricades to the complex told AFP he had watched the scenes unfold on TV.
“It was madness, we hope it will be calm today,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, the rallies in various Kenyan cities had been largely peaceful.
However, tensions escalated in Nairobi later in the day, with some protesters hurling stones at police, who deployed tear gas and water cannons before firing live bullets.
AFP journalists saw three people bleeding heavily and lying motionless on the ground near parliament.
