NAIROBI, Kenya - The police chief in this opposition stronghold said she ordered her officers to fire on a rioting crowd, saying she was forced to because police were overwhelmed during protests over disputed elections.
The comments from Grace Kaindi, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, were the first to acknowledge police fired on crowds. Previously, police had denied shooting anyone in the turmoil.
"It was an extreme situation and there was no other way to control them," Kaindi said of the Dec. 29 clash in Kisumu. "I gave the order to open fire myself when I heard that my officers were being overwhelmed. If we had not killed them, things would have got very bad."
The toll, according to hospital records: 44 shot dead, 143 wounded. Kaindi said one police officer was hurt by a rock hurled from the crowd.
Human rights workers say Kisumu, 200 miles northwest of Nairobi, suffered the worst police brutality because it is a stronghold of opposition leader Raila Odinga, who accuses President Mwai Kibaki of stealing the Dec. 27 election. International and local observers say the vote count was deeply flawed.
The acknowledged use of deadly force by police was likely to further inflame protesters who believe they are fighting a government that does not represent them, adding to the volatile mix of grievances in a conflict that has political and ethnic overtones. Clashes have pitted members of Kibaki's Kikuyu people against Odinga's Luo and other groups; most of those shot in Kisumu were Luo.
The Dec. 29 clash came a day before the election results were announced.
As it became clear Kibaki was going to claim victory, people in Kisumu armed with clubs and stones broke into stores, looted and set them ablaze, according to reporters at the scene. Protesters set up roadblocks of burning tires and stoned police, the reporters said, giving wildly varying accounts of the numbers of police and protesters.
"We tried tear gas, but it didn't calm them," Kaindi said. "Police felt their lives were in danger because there were very few of them, so they opened fire and controlled the situation."
She would not say how many officers or rioters were at the scene.
The U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch said in a weekend statement that police were behind dozens of killings and that they fired on both looters and opposition protesters under an unofficial "shoot-to-kill" policy.
Human Rights Watch said even people who did not attend rallies were shot, hit by police gunfire on the fringes of protests.
Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe denied the Human Rights Watch accusations, saying officers have "acted strictly within the laws of this country."
At a news conference Sunday, national Police Commissioner Hussein Ali insisted, "We have not shot anyone."
Of the 612 deaths government officials have attributed to election violence, 53 were in Kisumu; hospital records show 44 of those were killed by police bullets.
Kaindi's comments came Tuesday, a day before a new round of protests called by Odinga, who has ignored pleas from church leaders and others to cancel the demonstrations that have fueled much of the violence.
Kaindi said her officers would not again fire on protesters, but on Wednesday police in Kisumu let loose volleys of rifle fire into the air over rock-throwing demonstrators.
One of them, Dickson Oruk, said he saw the body of a man, apparently shot in the head, lying on the ground near three men who each had been shot in the chest.
Kaindi said she had no regrets about her Dec. 29 order to fire, charging all those shot were "looters and thieves."
On that day, Robert Owino, a 21-year-old mechanic, said he was walking home from work when he was shot in the chest.
"I'm very angry about what has happened because I am innocent," he said from his hospital bed. "So many people were shot and, like me, they were doing nothing wrong."
Hospital records seen by the AP show 44 of 53 bodies taken to its morgue after the Dec. 29 riots had bullet wounds. Fifty-nine people were admitted with gunshot wounds; 84 others were treated as outpatients for minor wounds.
Seven of the 53 were burned to death and two apparently were beaten to death with "blunt objects," the records show.
Nurses at the run-down hospital said the beds soon filled and they treated patients in the corridors. Many people bled to death for lack of blood for transfusions, nurses said.
The Rev. Charles Oloo K'Ochiel, a Roman Catholic priest who collated an independent tally of those shot from visits to the hospital and its morgue, told the AP he counted 68 dead and 56 wounded.
"When you go into a hospital ward and see that 95 percent of the patients are victims of bullet wounds, you have to wonder if the police were brought here to bring peace or to shoot every human being that comes their way," he said.
All those with bullet wounds were from Odinga's Luo tribe, the priest said. Victims burned and beaten to death were assumed to be Kikuyus, he said.
One body had eight bullet wounds, according to Oloo K'Ochiel.
"This is Raila's place," the priest said. "The police have been overzealous, fearing that people will react more violently to the election fraud than in other places."
In Kisumu, shattered windows and the blackened, twisted remains of cars, shops and gas stations testify to the anger of the city's residents.
Brad Onyango does not deny participating in the violence.
"We didn't want to hurt anyone, that wasn't our aim. We didn't have guns. Our aim was to show the world that we are angry and tired of this government and its corruption," the bus driver said.
George Odhiambo, a student who said he was caught up in the chaos, accuses the police of acting out of "pure malice and they opened fire on anyone."
Onyango accused police of stealing after breaking into shops with their rifles. Oloo K'Ochiel, the priest, said he also saw police stealing from shops.
Chief Kaindi denied her officers were looting.
