NAIROBI, Kenya — Hundreds of people carrying mattresses, cooking pots and furniture fled yesterday from a Nairobi shantytown, where more than 30 people have been killed in a police crackdown on a gang accused in a wave of beheadings.While many in Mathare acknowledge the shadowy Mungiki sect does operate from the slum’s maze of dusty streets, they also accused police of indiscriminate violence as they round up residents and demolish homes in search of weapons.

“I have never witnessed in my life anything like what is happening,” Jane Wachira, a 37-year-old mother of three, told The Associated Press as she packed her bags yesterday. “My children and I are traumatised.”

Mungiki was inspired by the 1950s Mau Mau uprising against British rule, but has become a street gang linked to murder, political violence and extortion. Hundreds of paramilitary police have been tearing through Mathare since Monday, rounding up residents, beating them with truncheons and knocking down homes constructed of wood and iron sheeting.

Police deny using excessive force, saying they are doing what is necessary to wipe out a fearsome sect accused in the deaths of at least 20 people in the past three months, including 12 found mutilated or beheaded since May.

The group also is accused of killing two police officers Monday — shootings that sparked this week’s crackdown.

Gideon Muchoki Maina said his 23-year-old brother, John, was among those killed by police this week.

“He was a sugarcane vendor, he had no association with the Mungiki,” Maina said.

Residents were loading their items onto pickup trucks and wheelbarrows or simply carrying them out of the slum. Many headed to the nearby Eastleigh neighbourhood and found shelter in churches or a youth sports centre.

Mungiki claims to have thousands of adherents, all drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest tribe. Members of the group, whose name means “multitude” in the Kikuyu language, traditionally wear dreadlocks, inspired by the Mau Mau who wore them as a symbol of anti-colonialism and their determination not to conform to Western norms. In recent years, however, many Mungiki have shaved their heads, believing dreadlocks are too conspicuous.

Ken Ouko, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Nairobi, said raids targeting the Mungiki are doomed because the group is an underground gang.

“The problem lies in the fact that the government doesn’t know whom they are wiping out,” Ouko said. “You cannot crack down someone you can’t see. The sect members are slippery and they do their work with secrecy.”

The recent bloodshed has raised fears that Mungiki members are out to disrupt elections in December, when President Mwai Kibaki will seek a second term.

Leaflets allegedly circulated by the group call on Kenyan youth to join and prepare for an uprising against the government.

The leaflet includes a threat that “if one youth is killed we shall kill 10 police.”

Clashes have broken out every election year since 1992, and this year has been no different.

In the past, human rights groups and critics of the government have accused politicians of instigating the violence to force opposition supporters to flee constituencies where the then-ruling Kenya African Union National party faced strong challenges.