NAIROBI, Kenya - A group of up to 300 young men have burned to death 11 people suspected of being witches and wizards in western Kenya in some cases slitting their victims’ throats or clubbing them to death before burning their bodies, officials said.

The gang moved from home to home through two villages, identifying their victims by using a list with names of suspected witches and wizards and the kind of spells they were believed to have cast on the community, said Ben Makori, a local councilor.

“The villagers are complaining that the (suspected) wizards and witches are making the bright children in the community dumb…. These (suspected) witches are not doing good things to us,” Makori told The Associated Press on the phone.

Deputy police spokesman Charles Owino said the gang hunted down the eight women and three men in the western Kenya villages of Kekoro and Matembe. Most of the victims were between 70 and 90 years old, Owino said.

Senior administrator Njoroge Ndirangu said the gang hunted down their victims Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

In some cases the gang pulled the victims out of their homes, slit their throats or clubbed them to death, said a police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Full Story Here:
Police: Kenya mob burns 11 ‘witches’

I have a very hard time accepting the idea that some people still actually DO believe in witches, warlocks, wizards, sorcerers and the like.

Coming from Louisiana I heard more than my share of tales, enchanted people and animals, spirits and ghosts, spells, voodoo, talking to the dead, all of it, and I never let it get to me, for some reason I just wasn’t too concerned, maybe I always suspected it wasn’t real, maybe I didn’t have enough sense to get scared, I don’t know, I just find it unbelievable that people would be killed by a mob and the mob would use the excuse that their victims were witches.

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