Kenya slum demolished to make way for road

The homes of about 30,000 people have been demolished in a Kenyan slum to make way for a new $20m (£15m) dual carriage way in the capital Nairobi.

The residents, living in part of the city's largest slum, Kibera, were given just two weeks notice to leave.

Bulldozers moved in at dawn as people watched helplessly from the sidelines.

Amnesty International has condemned the evictions, but Kenyan officials said the people living in the area were there illegally.

Residents fought the road in court, filing two legal challenges, but lost when a judge ruled the dual carriageway - which authorities say will ease the traffic in the west of the city - was in the public interest last year.

On Monday, some of the residents of Kibera informal settlement sat beside their belongings and cried out in anguish.

"We were raised here, we went to school here and we got married here. Now we don't know where to go," Jacqueline Anzemo, a 30-year-old mother-of three who has lived in Kibera for 16 years, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

SOURCE: BBC NEWS
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