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NAIROBI, KENYA —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 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 reported Friday of finding bodies of at least six women, while the state-funded police watchdog said nine had been found, seven of them women.
Horrendous scene
"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 meters (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.
Surge of disappearances
Kenya's police force is often accused of extrajudicial killings and other rights abuses, but convictions are rare.
"The discovery comes amid a troubling surge in cases of mysterious disappearances and abductions, particularly following recent protests against the finance bill," a coalition of civil society and rights groups said in a statement.
"This horrific incident is a mass fatality issue, it represents a grave violation of human rights and raises serious concerns about the rule of law and security in our country," it said.
National police chief Japhet Koome, the target of much public anger over the protest deaths and reported abductions, resigned Friday after less than two years in the post.
He is the latest head to roll as President William Ruto scrambles to contain the worst crisis of his rule, triggered by the protests over deeply unpopular plans for tax hikes.
Crowds that gathered at the dumpsite Friday chanted "Ruto must go," the slogan of Gen-Z Kenyans leading the demonstrations that have now morphed into a wider campaign against the government, corruption and alleged police brutality.
"As the police investigations unfold, IPOA is keenly independently undertaking preliminary inquiries to establish whether there was any police involvement in the deaths, or failure to act to prevent them," the agency said.
The IPOA also called for public help in its investigations into reports of abductions, unlawful arrests and disappearances during the anti-government protests.
But it did not make any link to those missing and the dumped bodies, and some people on social media have described them as victims of femicide.
On Monday, doomsday cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie went on trial along with 94 co-defendants over the deaths of more than 400 followers he is accused of inciting to starve themselves to death in order to meet Jesus.
He and his co-accused also face charges of murder, manslaughter and child cruelty in separate cases over one of the world's worst cult-related massacres.