Minister killed in Kenyan helicopter crash

AL Jazeera Africa

Internal security minister and his deputy among six people reported to have died in police helicopter accident. Last Modified: 10 Jun 2012 09:24 inShare10

The cause of a chopper crash that has killed Kenyan internal security minister George Saitoti is still unknown [Reuters]

Kenya's minister for internal security who once served as the country's vice president, and his deputy are among six people who died when a police helicopter crashed near the capital, according to Kenyan police officials. A spokesman said Raila Odinga, the Kenyan prime minister, had been informed of the deaths of George Saitoti, his internal security minister, and Orwa Ojode, his deputy on Sunday. "We have lost a cabinet minister, his assistant and their bodyguards and the pilots," a police source told AFP news agency. The accident occurred on Sunday in the Ngong hills on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital, a police source told AFP, adding that the reason for the crash was not immediately clear. A Reuters photographer counted three charred bodies at the scene of the crash and more people were feared to have been on board the helicopter. Saitoti, who was a long-serving vice president under the former President Daniel Arap Moi, was also a presidential candidate in an election expected to be held by March next year. Saitoti, an ally of President Mwai Kibaki, was the leading government voice against armed Somali group al-Shabaab. He often visited the scenes of grenade attacks inside Kenya and had vowed that Kenya would crush the group. Al Jazeera's Peter Greste, reporting from Nairobi, said that while most people in the country were still waking up to the news, he expected that a a lot of them would find it difficult to accept that this was just an accident. Saitoti was one of the most powerful politicians in the country a lot of people would like to see him out of the way, said Greste. Kenya's troops have been fighting al-Shabaab in neighbouring Somalia since last October. The Somali group have killed several people in a string of grenade attacks in Nairobi, the far north and the coast in retaliation to Kenya's moves against them. Source: Agencies