Bloodthirsty Kenyan mob beheads killer's brother

NAIROBI, June 9 (Reuters) A Kenyan mob, enraged after a man killed five people in a shooting rampage and disappeared, caught his brother instead and beheaded him, police said today.

The killing spree took place on Wednesday when 18-year-old Kibor Yego shot dead five people after a family dispute and then disappeared into a forest in the Rift Valley.

''This man, armed with an AK-47 went berserk and shot dead five people,'' police spokesman Gideon Kibunjah told Reuters.

''The villagers then caught his brother and exacted their revenge by beheading him with a panga (machete),'' he added.

Vigilante ''mob justice'' by angry crowds taking the law into their own hands and lynching suspected criminals is common in Kenya, where many lack faith in the police who they say are corrupt and too ill-equipped to act.

Kibunjah said Yego had vanished into a forest in Marakwet, about 450 km northeast of the capital Nairobi.

The mob, including some relatives of those killed also set fire to houses owned by Thomas Kibor, the gunman's brother.

REUTERS SHR BST1915