Onlookers cry as they leave the main mortuary in Nairobi, Kenya, yesterday, hours after police killed 20 suspected members of a religious sect called Mungiki. The killings follow the deaths of two police officers late Monday in a north-eastern Nairobi neighbourhood. It is unclear if the unidentified people in the picture are relatives of any of the dead suspected Mungiki members.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP):

KENYAN POLICE stormed a Nairobi slum searching for members of a shadowy religious sect accused of beheading its victims, killing 22 suspects and arresting 100 during overnight gunbattles, officials said yesterday.

The Mungiki members were shot over about eight hours between Monday night and early yesterday, police said. Authorities were on a manhunt following Monday's shooting deaths of two police officers, believed to be the work of Mungiki.

"The police mounted an operation to crack down on those who were behind the killing," police spokesman Eric Kiraithe told The Associated Press. More than 100 people tried to obstruct the operation and a shoot-out broke out, he said.

Mungiki, which has been outlawed since 2002, is suspected in the deaths of at least 18 people in the past three months, including 10 people found mutilated or beheaded since May.

The latest beheadings were overnight, the same time as the gun battles in Nairobi, in Muranga, 40 miles (65 kilometres) north of the capital, police said.

A freelance TV journalist videotaped the raid in Nairobi's Mathare slum, showing senior police official Julius Ndegwa standing over the corpse of one of the officers killed Monday night. He exhorted more than a dozen police surrounding him to "clamp down on these elements".