Fighting Scars Smallest Kenyans

Kids witness parents' death in ethnic clashes
By Caroline Zimmerman,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 3, 2008 3:43 PM CST
Fighting Scars Smallest Kenyans
Internally displaced Kenyan children look into the camera as they seek refuge at a police station in Thika, on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, Friday Feb. 1. 2008. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon arrived in Nairobi on Friday to hold talks to help resolve the month long post election crisis that...   (Associated Press)

The violence in Kenya is separating droves of children from their parents—sometimes forever, the BBC reports. One Nairobi orphanage is currently hosting 60 displaced children; some wait for their parents to find them, but most know their mothers and fathers are already dead. "It's been a traumatizing experience for them," says one Red Cross activist.

The children at SOS Children's Home run for cover when they hear gunshots from a nearby slum. After witnessing the ethnic violence in the country up close, it's become a reflex. "My mother was attacked by men with machetes. I didn't see it—when I arrived, there was only blood on the floor," said one 13-year-old orphan. (More Kenya stories.)

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