Kenyan police clash with anti-govt protesters

The streets of Kenya’s capital Nairobi remained deserted and most businesses shut as anti-government protests entered the second week. While the police managed to mute the protests in the capital, confining them to pockets of the city where the opposition has strongholds, most citizens and traders kept off the streets on Monday for fear of violence, Xinhua news agency reported. In the Kibera slum in Nairobi, one of the areas where Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya Coalition led by opposition leader Raila Odinga has a huge support base, tens of youths clashed with anti-riot police officers. The officers teargassed the youths who pelted them with stones and lit bonfires in violent confrontations as they sought to block them from reaching the Nairobi central business district. Similar scenarios were reported in Mathare and Kawangware slums, other strongholds of Odinga, which last week were a hotbed of violent anti-government protests. Odinga and fellow Azimio leader Kalonzo Musyoka showed up in Kawangware to lead the protests. As their convoy snaked through the settlement, police lobbed teargas at them and the protestors, sparking a clash as the leaders were driven away. “Kenyans are saying no to oppression,” Odinga tweeted later as he urged his supporters to soldier on with the fight. More protests were also witnessed in the lakeside city of Kisumu as well as Migori on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. In the two areas, the political bastions of Odinga, youths engaged the police in running battles and pelted them with stones as business in the towns was disrupted for the second straight week. In Nairobi’s city center, though deserted, the streets were largely peaceful as police kept vigil to ensure no opposition supporters made way into the central business district. It all started early Monday morning when police erected roadblocks on all roads leading into the city center to bar protestors. On Mombasa Road which links the Kenyan capital Nairobi and the coastal city o