Kenyan police battle slum-dwellers, head found

NAIROBI, June 6 (Reuters) Kenyan police used whips and teargas to battle slum-dwellers today in a crackdown on the Mungiki criminal gang blamed for the latest macabre discovery of a severed and skinned head, witnesses said.

''It's very chaotic. I can hear gunshots now,'' Peter Kamande, who helps run a community group in Nairobi's Mathare shanty town, told Reuters by telephone.

The latest violence in the narrow, filth-strewn alleys of Mathare -- a Mungiki stronghold -- came after police killed 22 people there early yesterday while chasing members of the gang that is wreaking havoc across central Kenya.

Various Mungiki victims have been beheaded, the latest head found skinned to the bone in Mathare today.

Scores of police moved into the slum at midday, smashing doors, whipping passers-by, tipping over drums of illegal alcohol and handcuffing suspects, a Reuters witness saw.

Local women taunted the police from a distance.

''You are afraid of Mungiki,'' shouted one, prompting police to lob two canisters of teargas into the crowd.

Named after the word for ''multitude'' in the Kikuyu language, Mungiki emerged in the 1990s as a quasi-religious sect, and said it inherited the mantle of Mau Mau rebels who fought the British colonial authorities before independence in 1963.

Claiming thousands of members in central Kenya, the group later turned to large-scale racketeering, particularly in the lucrative minibus trade. About a dozen Mungiki ''defectors'' have been found tortured and killed, some beheaded, in recent weeks.

''AGENTS OF THE DEVIL'' As well as smashing illegal alcohol dens, police confiscated hundreds of marijuana cigarettes and some hunting knives.

''This is the way to get Mungiki,'' the police officer leading the operation, James Akorou, told Reuters at the scene.

While carrying out the new operation, the police faced criticism for killing so many people in yesterday's Mathare sweep.

''The government has bungled badly with these extrajudicial killings,'' opposition leader Raila Odinga told Reuters. ''You cannot just go into an orgy of wanton slaughter.'' Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said officers had shown ''restraint'' while flushing out Mungiki, whose wave of killings has terrified many in the east African nation of 35 million.

Police will continue undercover operations in Mathare but try to minimise disruption, he said. ''We don't want to disrupt the day-to-day lives of people living there,'' he said.

Media quoted a statement from the ''Mungiki Defence Force'' that said only one of the Mathare dead was a gang member and warned authorities to back off or face ''dire consequences''.

Mathare residents said the first, night-time police operation, which met armed resistance, targeted some of the wrong people. A Reuters reporter met boys as young as 10 showing cuts and bruises they said police inflicted with clubs.

''They woke me up while I was lying with my wife. They took me outside and made me lie down while they beat me on the buttocks,'' one man said, clenching his teeth in pain from deep cuts and a broken arm as he spoke in a tin hut.

In a further show of force, security forces today patrolled villages in central Kenya where Mungiki is active.

''The last time I saw this was after the coup (in 1982),'' said a resident in Murang'a district, where gun-toting police strode down dirty roads checking ID cards. Suspected Mungiki members shot dead four people in Murang'a yesterday.

Many fear the violence is a taste of worse to come ahead of the presidential election in December. Tribal and criminal violence traditionally flares before major votes in Kenya.

Faced with headlines like ''Bloodbath'' and ''Massacre,'' a government spokesman said the tough response was the only way to handle Mungiki. ''These are not people with any political, social or religious agenda,'' Information Minister Mutahi Kagwe said.

''They are agents of the devil.'' REUTERS AM RK2128