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NAIROBI: Kenyan marathon runner Wesley Ngetich has
been killed by a poisoned arrow, officials said Tuesday, the second
international athlete to be claimed by post-election chaos in three
weeks.
The deadly arrow pierced through
34-year-old Ngetich’s chest on Monday in western Kenya’s
Transmara district, near the world famous Maasai Mara Game Reserve,
officials added.
Ngetich won the Grandma’s
Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, in 2005 and 2007, but the
post-election violence forced him and 13 other runners to withdraw
from this month’s Arizona Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in Phoenix,
Arizona.
Ngetich, a married father of
three, set his personal best time of 2:12:10 when he finished second
at the Chevron Houston Marathon in 2006.
On December 31, Lucas Sang, a
member of the Kenyan 4 x 400m relay quartet at the 1988 Olympic
Games in Seoul, became a victim of the violence spurred by the
December 30 declaration that President Mwai Kibaki had won the
polls.
Sang, 45, who retired to farming
after quitting the track, was killed as he walked home in the
western Kenyan town of Eldoret while another top athlete, world
marathon champion Luke Kibet, narrowly escaped death.
The chaos has forced six Kenyan
middle-distance runners, including two of the strongest performers
in Austria’s Peuerbach meet, Job Tanui and Victor Kipkosgei-Bitok,
to seek temporary refuge and postponed their return to a future
date.
The normally stable east African
country has been swept by bloodshed and riots and opposition loser
Raila Odinga has refused to recognize the president, accusing him of
rigging his way to victory.
The clashes have killed at least
772 people, threatening to plunge the east African nation into
turmoil.
In addition the violence, which
has mainly rocked Nairobi slums and swathes of western Kenya, has
prompted the disruption of many sporting events and disrupted
transport.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan on Wednesday due to try and launch a dialogue between Kibaki
and Odinga, who have refused to meet for face-to-fate talks since
December 27.
--AFP
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