Three Kenyans were hacked to death and police killed at least nine others in areas around the capital Nairobi where the feared Mungiki criminal gang is strong, authorities said today.
The deaths come weeks after the Kenyan government began a crackdown on Mungiki in which at least 33 suspected members were killed by police.
Police gunned down at least nine suspected gangsters overnight after an attack at a bar in the Kariobangi area, which has a strong Mungiki presence, a police spokesman said.
A relative of one of the two minibus drivers who were killed by the Munkiki gang mourns outside their home in Banana, some 20km from the capital Nairobi. Reuters/Antony Njuguna
"Yesterday police intercepted a gang along Kangundo Road and eight or so were gunned down, and this morning we gunned down another one along Kirinyaga Road," spokesman Eric Kiraithe said, referring to areas in Nairobi.
It was too early to say if the suspects were Mungiki, he added.
The hunt came after a gang threw a grenade and began firing indiscriminately at the bar. Kiraithe had no figures on how many were killed in the attack, but local media reported four.
Reacting to a spate of beheadings and murders blamed on Mungiki, the government has vowed to wipe the gang out.
In Banana, a village in Kiambu district just north of Nairobi, police overnight found three young men hacked to death, a style used by Mungiki.
Two victims worked on matatus, Kenya's ubiquitous minibuses from which experts say Mungiki makes millions of shillings through extortion. The machete-wielding killers menaced others.