Kenyan police fire tear gas at mourners during former Prime Minister Odinga’s public viewing

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Police in Kenya fired tear gas at thousands of mourners at a public viewing Thursday of the body of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, an influential politician who died a day earlier in India.

Mourners filled a 60,000-capacity football stadium in the capital, Nairobi, after escorting the body on foot from the country’s main airport, 18 miles (29 kilometers) away. Tensions rose when they breached the presidential pavilion, prompting police officers to fire tear gas.

READ MORE: Former Kenyan premier Raila Odinga, a key figure in African democracy efforts, dies at 80

A stampede erupted at the stadium gates as mourners fled, injuring an unknown number of people, while leaders present remained locked inside a room for safety.

Odinga’s body arrived from India Thursday morning in a chartered airplane and was given a water cannon salute at the airport.

A planned ceremonial reception of the body by close family and top leaders at the airport was disrupted when mourners demanded access to view the body. Eager crowds walked alongside the military vehicle carrying Odinga from the runway while waving twigs.

“We are in mourning as a country. We loved Baba so much, he was the defender of the people,” said Beatrice Adala, one of the mourners at the airport. Like many, she called Odinga “Baba,” a Kiswahili honorific reserved for a beloved father figure.

The politician, lauded for his fight for democracy, died Wednesday at the age of 80 after collapsing during a morning walk. Efforts to resuscitate him at a hospital in India’s Kerala state were unsuccessful.

Odinga will be given a state funeral Sunday at his rural home of Bondo, in Kenya’s western region.

According to his family, he had requested to be buried quickly, ideally within 72 hours, which is unusual for popular leaders in Kenya.

The country has declared Friday a public holiday when Kenyans will congregate at a football stadium in Nairobi for his state funeral service. Another public viewing will be held Saturday in the western county of Kisumu, close to his rural home.

Parliament announced that the planned public viewing at the parliamentary precincts had been moved to a football stadium to provide more space for mourners.

Kenyan President William Ruto, who won the 2022 election against Odinga but later signed a political pact with him to appoint opposition members to the Cabinet, mourned him as “a patriot of uncommon courage, a pan-Africanist, a unifier who sought peace and unity above power and self-gain.”

Ruto declared seven days of national mourning for the veteran politician.

Odinga ran for Kenya’s presidency five times over three decades — sometimes with enough support that many believed he might win.

Although Odinga never succeeded at becoming president, for many he was a revered figure and statesman whose activism helped steer Kenya into a vibrant multiparty democracy.

He came close to taking the presidency in 2007, when he narrowly lost to incumbent Mwai Kibaki in a disputed election marred by ethnic violence.

Odinga then served as prime minister of Kenya from 2008 to 2013 in a unity government put together with the mediation of the international community.

In 2017, a court nullified the presidential election — a first in Africa — after Odinga challenged it, but he decided to boycott the fresh vote, asserting it wouldn’t be credible without reforms.