By Anne Soy, BBC deputy Africa editor & Peter Mwai, BBC Verify,In the chaotic context of this week's violence on the streets of the Kenyan capital and a government accused of responding brutally to protests, rumours began to take on a life of their own - feeding into public anger and further stoking a situation that was already tense.
But a BBC investigation has found no evidence of mass killings in Githurai - raising questions about how readily misinformation can spread amid a crisis.The first sense of anything significant taking place in the suburb emerged on Tuesday evening. It has rows of formal housing as well as areas of informal settlements, home to tens of thousands of commuters who make the daily trip into central Nairobi.
and some can be seen shooting - it is unclear from the video whether at the protesters or in the air, and it is impossible to know whether the guns were firing live rounds, rubber bullets or blanks.A graphic image circulating online shows a body with at least eight bullet holes, but the nature of how it was taken makes it challenging to verify because it is taken at very close range and there are no clearly identifiable location points.
But an analysis of social media shows misinformation about what had happened was already starting to take hold. The state-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said it had "received unverified reports of scores of residents who were killed by the stray bullets", which it said it would investigate.
“I dare ask, is Githurai a protected area? Is Githurai an area that members of the public should not stay, should not live? Why was there a massacre where people are living peacefully? We demand answers to those questions.” She said: “We need to ascertain the number. We want to set up a team to investigate the concerns that were made, the rumours that bodies were collected.”
A spokesperson for the Police Reform Working Group on Friday told the BBC the organisation’s position was now that the alleged massacre at Githurai was “unverified”, but declined to comment any further on its statement from Wednesday. A police vehicle was burned. “We dismantled the shell and sold what remained of it as scrap metal,” one resident told us.
In its main evening bulletin on Wednesday, Kenya’s Citizen TV reported that 20 officers had been injured after a police vehicle was attacked - and repeated the allegation heard earlier by the BBC that another police vehicle had been burned. “The internet was down, electricity was down. So many deaths were recorded, we were hearing gunshots from wherever. But there’s nobody actually talking about what happened in Githurai.“I barely got any sleep yesterday just thinking about how many people died in Githurai,” she added.
She said the organisation she works for, Githurai Social Justice Centre, had been “on the ground since morning”, held community meetings and forums trying to look for these victims or their families, but had found no evidence of killings at the reported scale.Ms Gachanja did say they had traced one body with bullet wounds to City Mortuary, the main government morgue.