Three killed as Kenya police fight street traders

NAIROBI, June 1 (Reuters) Three people were killed today in Nairobi as street traders protesting forceful eviction fought running battles with police in some of the worst clashes in the Kenyan capital in recent months, witnesses said.

Among the dead was a policeman stoned and beaten to death by traders taking revenge for the killing of a colleague who witnesses and his brother said was shot dead while trying to flee arrest.

One witness said Edwin Ooko, 23, a dealer in second-hand clothes, was shot at point blank range by a policeman as he tried to flee clutching a bundle of clothes.

''I saw him being stopped by a plain clothes policeman then I saw the policeman remove a pistol from under his shirt and shoot him point blank in the head,'' a mechanic working near the area who identified himself only as Mustapha told Reuters.

''(The policeman) then left him lying there, returned his pistol and called for backup on his police radio,'' he added.

Ooko's brother, Cyprian Ochieng said his brother was dead when he arrived at the scene.

''I don't know why he was shot. I only came and saw his body lying here, but eyewitnesses told me a policeman had shot him in the head,'' Ochieng said.

No police officials were immediately available to comment.

As Ooko's body lay in the street, angry hawkers lit bonfires and threw stones at the police who shot into the crowd killing another person, witnesses said.

Opposition leader Uhuru Kenyatta visited the scene but left without making any statement.

Kenya's police, accompanied by city council workers, routinely arrest the hawkers in a bid to clean up the capital but their confrontation rarely turns so violent.

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