Kenyan brew toll rises to 128 dead, man arrested

NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) -- The death toll from a lethal illegal brew rose to 128 on Saturday and Kenyan police said they had arrested a man suspected of manufacturing the poisonous element in the drink.

Police arrested Samuel Njoroge Karanja at a chemical factory in a slum area of the capital Nairobi on Friday, the East African Standard reported.

More than 400 people -- mostly men -- were still in local hospitals on Saturday, some of them blind, after drinking the brew which police said was laced with methanol.

Karanja, known to his customers as "Kumi Kumi" (Ten-Ten), was arrested last year for running an illegal distillery but the charges against him were later dismissed, the Standard said.

The deadly consignment first hit the streets in a Nairobi slum area on Tuesday. Deaths were later reported in several other congested slum areas around the city.

Despite widespread publicity about its dangers, police said some people were still buying and drinking the illicit concoction and further cases of poisoning could be expected.

The brew, known locally as chang'aa, is highly intoxicating. It offers one of the few means of escape from the misery of slum living and is popular among Nairobi's poor.

The city's slums, home to at least half of the capital's three million population, are packed with shebeens which compete for business by boasting of the potency of their brew.

Most are run by elderly widows and police say they have arrested 12 women suspected of selling the drink.

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