KENYAN police said Saturday that they had found more bags filled with dismembered female body parts in a grisly discovery at a rubbish dump that has horrified and angered the country.
Detectives have been scouring the site in the Nairobi slum of Mukuru since the mutilated corpses of at least six women were found on Friday in sacks floating in a sea of garbage.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said Saturday that another five bags had been retrieved from the abandoned quarry, three of them containing female body parts, including severed legs and two torsos.
“We want to assure the public that our investigations will be thorough and shall cover a wide range of areas, including but not limited to the possible activities of cultists and serial killings,” the directorate said in a statement.
Kenya was left reeling by the discovery last year of mass graves in a forest near the Indian Ocean coast containing the bodies of hundreds of followers of a doomsday starvation cult.
The country’s law enforcement services are also under scrutiny after dozens of people were killed during anti-government demonstrations last month, with rights group accusing officers of using excessive force.
Police had on Friday reported finding bodies of at least six women, while the state-funded police watchdog said nine had been found, seven of them women.
“As the government deploys all necessary resources and manpower to expedite this investigation, we appeal to the members of the public to remain calm and give our detectives a chance to deliver justice to the victims of this horrendous scene,” the DCI statement said.
Tensions have been running high at the Mukuru site, with local media reports that police had fired into the air to try to disperse an angry crowd of locals.
The DCI said a team of detectives and forensic experts “were impeded by agitated members of the public from accessing the scene”.
The Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA) had said Friday that it was investigating whether there was any police involvement in the gruesome saga.
“The bodies, wrapped in bags and secured by nylon ropes, had visible marks of torture and mutilation,” it said, noting that the dumpsite was less than 100 metres (330 feet) from a police station.
The IPOA is also looking into claims of abductions of demonstrators who went missing after the widespread anti-government protests turned deadly.