Renewed protests in Kenya as authorities vow to ‘halt the descent’

Anti-government protesters set tyres ablaze in Kenya’s capital Nairobi and the western city of Kisumu on Thursday in a third round of demonstrations organised by opponents of President William Ruto.
In Mathare, a low-income settlement in Nairobi, protesters used improvised catapults to launch stones at police in riot gear, footage on Kenyan television showed.
The police were out in force after the last protest led by opposition leader Raila Odinga on Monday descended into apparent tit-for-tat attacks by both sides.
On Monday night, a church and a mosque were set ablaze in Nairobi’s low-income Kibera district and properties belonging to Odinga’s family and former president Uhuru Kenyatta, who supported Odinga in the election, were vandalised.
Religious leaders and human rights groups called for calm in the aftermath, warning against the kind of ethnic fighting that killed more than 1,000 people following the disputed 2007 election.
A senior official at the interior ministry, Kithure Kindiki, echoed those concerns in a statement on Wednesday, referring to “ethnically-laced arson” in Kibera, a multi-ethnic district that saw some of the worst violence in 2007.