Rioting by opponents of Kenya's draft constitution left three people dead in the country's main lakeside town, police said Sunday, according to AP. Saturday's unrest was sparked by opposition to a rally meant to drum up support for the constitution before a Nov. 21 referendum on the proposed charter. The deaths in Kisumu, a lakeside town 260 kilometers (160 miles) west of the capital, Nairobi, were the first fatalities in a bitter campaign that has seen frequent violence between supporters and critics of the document. A man and a teenage boy were killed when police opened fire at a crowd of 100 people who had stormed a police station in Kisumu to free three people arrested earlier for alleged incitement to violence, said Bakari Omar Jambeni, the Nyanza Province police chief. Another man was killed but the cause of death was unknown because he had no visible injuries, Jambeni said. Forty-four people, including five policemen, were injured in the rioting, which preceded the arrival of a team of Cabinet ministers campaigning in support of the proposed new constitution. Police arrested 47 people who will be charged on Monday with various offenses, Jambeni said. The referendum, Kenya's first since independence from Britain in 1963, has seen President Mwai Kibaki's Cabinet split, with members crisscrossing the country campaigning for opposing sides and sometimes being attacked with stones. Dozens have been arrested as a result of the violence, including two lawmakers.
