Brutal gun attacks cause alarm in Kenya

NAIROBI, Feb 12 (Reuters) A 79-year-old American missionary and her daughter, the wife of a US diplomat, are cut down by automatic gunfire on the edge of town.

A top Kenyan HIV scientist and two other people, one on crutches, are killed when teenage gunmen indiscriminately spray vehicles on a highway with AK-47 fire.

A security firm, under the slogan ''Time to Fight Back'', advertises fully armoured four-wheel drive vehicles that can withstand anything from sub-machine gun fire to landmines.

Baghdad? Mogadishu? No, Nairobi, capital of east Africa's richest economy.

The city has been known as ''Nairobbery'' for decades and carjackings, armed robberies and burglaries have long been a fact of life. Even now, Kenya has far fewer murders than South Africa, one of the most violent countries on earth.

But a wave of cold-blooded killings, many in daylight, over the last three months have rung new alarm bells.

''It is scary crime now. Carjackers used to take the car and leave you, now they are taking the car and shooting you,'' said Maina Kiai, head of the government's human rights commission.

''It is a failure of the state. The government cannot provide security,'' he told Reuters.

Local newspapers, leading the charge against allegedly complacent government leaders and incompetent police, have run days of headlines like: ''Gangland Kenya,'' and ''Under Siege''.

The US State Department, stunned by the killings of missionary Lois Anderson and her daughter Zelda White, 51, warned Americans about the dangers of visiting Kenya and did not mince its words about the Nairobi government.

Violent crimes ''can occur at any time and in any location, and are becoming increasingly frequent, brazen, vicious and often fatal.

... Kenyan authorities have limited capacity to deter and investigate such acts,'' it said in a travel warning.

VIGILANTE KILLINGS The high profile deaths of foreigners and prominent Kenyans have attracted the greatest attention but it is ordinary, often poor locals who suffer the most from violent crime.

Most of the more than 50 people killed over the last three months were Kenyans and more than a dozen were police, including some killed during a cash van heist last month.

The anger of Kenyans about crime and their lack of faith in the police is brutally illustrated by the lethal vigilante justice often meted out to criminals.

With an election due at the end of the year, the wave of crime is starting to hurt President Mwai Kibaki's government.

''I am fed up of the say-nothing, do-nothing style of President Kibaki even when the country is burning,'' said opposition firebrand Raila Odinga, calling with other politicians for the army to be mobilised.

With headlines on crime dominating the papers for days the government is clearly feeling the heat.

''The (US) advisory was issued with a sense of panic ...

issuing a travel advisory in terms of a few acts of thuggery in our country is totally unfair,'' government spokesman Alfred Mutua told reporters.

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