Kenyan police tore through a Nairobi slum today, shooting dead at least nine people in the third day of a crackdown on a stronghold of the Mungiki criminal gang blamed for a wave of beheadings, witnesses said.
A Reuters reporter saw nine bodies loaded into a police truck, dripping with thickened blood, during a day where gunfire rang out relentlessly as hundreds of police and paramilitary officers combed Nairobi's Mathare slum.
Other witnesses said there were at least 14 killed, but that could not immediately be confirmed.
Police had no immediate comment on the latest deaths, which bring the toll to at least 31 dead so far since hundreds of police swept down on the slum after two of their officers were killed late on Monday.
Since then, police have besieged Mathare, ripping down shacks and beating residents in their hunt for members of the Mungiki, named after the Kikuyu word for "multitude".
Police also want to locate a missing police officer feared killed by the gang, which has increasingly targeted government officials.
One officer clubbed a woman in the throat as she clutched a baby, the reporter said. Many people were bleeding from head wounds.
"We are hearing gunshots ... Everybody has fled the area because of the police," Peter Kamande, who helps run a Mathare community group, said.
Mungiki began in the 1990s as a quasi-religious sect but police say it is now a large, organised crime operation like the Italian Mafia with members across central Kenya and Nairobi.
Mungiki claims to have inherited the mantle of the Mau Mau rebels who fought British colonial authorities before independence in 1963, and portrays itself as fighting for the poor against rich elites.
The gang holds a tight grip on Mathare, forcing residents to buy their water and electricity from it at high prices, and pay protection money and other "taxes".
It has also urged an overthrow of the government, raising fears it intends to play a violent role later this year in Kenya's elections, which are usually tainted by violence sparked by politicians keen to keep their seats.
Police killed 22 people in the shantytown on Tuesday after two officers were ambushed and killed by Mungiki, and violence broke out there again on Wednesday when officers used whips and teargas to battle residents and arrest suspects.