Young Writers Society

Turmoil Grows in Kenya with more than 100 dead.

NAIROBI, Kenya — The post-election turbulence continued to spread in Kenya on Monday as a curfew was imposed in Kisumu, the nation’s third-largest city; ethnic fighting intensified; and more than 100 people were killed.

A knot of rage seems to be moving across the country, from the slums of Nairobi, the capital, to the cities along the Indian Ocean to usually tranquil towns on the savanna. Many people are furious that Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner on Sunday of the country’s most fiercely fought election, despite widespread evidence of ballot-rigging.

After three days of rioting, some streets in Nairobi are beginning to look like war zones, with trucks of soldiers rumbling through a wasteland of burned cars and abandoned homes, their tires crunching over broken glass. Gangs of young men have built roadblocks between the neighborhoods of the Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s tribe, and those of the Luos, the tribe of Raila Odinga, the top opposition leader, who narrowly lost the election. The nomad’s land between them is often a single lane of potholed asphalt, patrolled by thugs with huge rocks in their hands.

The election has uncorked dangerous resentment toward Kikuyus, the privileged ethnic group of Kenya, who have dominated business and politics since independence in 1963. In some areas, witnesses said that mobs were stopping cars, pulling out passengers and demanding identification cards to determine whether they were Kikuyu (one can often tell by the name). If so, they were killed.

On Monday, Agence France-Presse reported that six Kikuyu people were hacked to death in Mombasa, on Kenya’s eastern coast.