At least 13 people were killed in Kenya today when police opened fire in a Nairobi slum and ethnic groups clashed during protests against the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki.
The worst bloodshed was in the huge Kibera slum, an opposition stronghold, where at least seven people were killed and a dozen wounded by police automatic gunfire. The French medical charity MSF called it a "massacre".
Police also opened fire and lobbed tear gas in the port of Mombasa, where one person was killed in protests after Friday Muslim prayers, and the southern town of Narok.
Today's deaths were the worst toll from three days of protests called by opposition leader Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) against Kibaki's re-election.
At least 21 people have been killed in the demonstrations, which were due to end today. About 650 people have been killed since the disputed December 27th election.
The opposition and human rights groups accuse the police of using excessive force and firing indiscriminately at unarmed protesters. Police say they only shoot at rioters and looters.
Reuters journalists counted seven bodies from the Kibera shooting, including a man with the back of his head blown off and 15-year-old girl, Rosina Otieno. Both were carried to the nearby Masaba hospital morgue in a white pickup truck.
Otieno's aunt, Martha Mtishi, told Reuters: "If they can kill a little girl let them kill us all."
At least 11 wounded people were brought to the hospital. "We need more doctors because ... we cannot handle an emergency of this magnitude," hospital administrator Joe Momanyi said.
Outside the hospital a crowd shouted: "Murderers and killers."
A Reuters reporter saw police shooting protesters in Kibera. One man in a red baseball cap and black T-shirt dropped to the ground, blood gushing from his knee.
Protesters built a burning barricade in the slum, and boys hiding in shacks and firing stones from slingshots played a cat-and-mouse game with police.
"They were trying to uproot railway lines. The police came to stop them and started shooting. They started howling and running away," said James Muga, an unemployed 45-year-old as repeated bursts of automatic gunfire rang out.