NAIROBI: Kenyan police said the murder of a politician in the capital Nairobi appears to have been premeditated and targeted, with the president promising on Thursday that those responsible would be caught.
Charles Ong`ondo Were, an MP for the Kasipul area in the country`s west, was shot when his car stopped at a red light on a busy thoroughfare by an unknown assailant who fled the scene on a motorbike, police said.
Political killings are rare in Kenya, considered a relatively stable country in the turbulent Horn of Africa region. President William Ruto expressed condolences, and on Thursday urged police to conduct a thorough investigation into the incident.
`Those responsible must be held to account,` he said in a post on X. The motorbike passenger shot the MP at around 7:30pm as he sat in the car on the major Ngong Road, according to eyewitnesses cited in the police statement released hours afterwards.
`The nature of this crime appears to be both targeted and premeditated, National Police Service spokesperson Muchiri Nyaga said in the statement.
