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Kenyan Government Official Killed in Air Crash

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: June 10, 2012   

LIBREVILLE, Gabon — A top Kenyan official, who grew up chasing cows in the Great Rift Valley and went on to become one of the most powerful men in the country, was killed Sunday morning when the police helicopter he was riding in plunged into a forest west of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.       

The official, George Saitoti, a towering, bespectacled fixture in Kenyan politics for the past three decades who had been serving as the internal security minister, died in the crash with five others, including the pilots and Joshua Orwa Ojode, the assistant internal security minister.

Kenyan officials said they did not know the cause of the crash, though there was no evidence that it was the result of a terrorist attack or foul play. Witnesses reported seeing the helicopter engulfed in smoke and swaying violently before it dived from the sky.

“The chopper crashed and exploded on impact, scattering money and books,” Leonard Njoroge, a witness, told The Sunday Nation, a Kenyan newspaper.