Another Kenyan opposition legislator was shot dead Thursday, police said, the second to be killed in less than a week, as the country's post-election violence spiralled, according to dpa. Police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said the man was shot outside a hotel with a female police constable in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret, some 300 kilometres north-west of the capital Nairobi, and was pronounced dead at the hospital. The woman was seriously injured. Police called the incident a "crime of passion," local station NTV reported. The opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) confirmed the victim's name as David Too and charged that the incident had been politically motivated, coming just as negotiations between the opposition and the government over disputed polls kicked off in Nairobi. "This second execution of an ODM MP (member of parliament) within four days is part of the plot to reduce the number of MPs in parliament," said Raila Odinga, the leader of ODM, which won 99 out of 210 seats in last month's parliamentary vote. Kiraithe said a police officer suspected with shooting the pair had been charged with murder and was set to appear in court. Witnesses in Kisumu, an opposition stronghold on the shores of Lake Victoria in the west, said hundreds of youth poured onto the streets as the news of Too's death broke. "They heard about (the killing), then they just started fighting all over the place, throwing stones at anyone and at cars," said Omari Onyancha, a taxi driver in Kenya's third largest city. Melitus Mugabe Were, another opposition legislator, was shot dead in front of his home Tuesday which sparked fresh violence by opposition supporters nationwide. The ODM has called Were's death a "political assassination" but the police is treating it as a murder. More than 800 people have been killed in Kenya's crisis and some 250,000 displaced in what has marked a disturbing change in the country seen as a beacon of stability in a volatile region.
