Ugandan Olympic marathon runner, Rebecca Cheptegei, has died, days after being set ablaze by her boyfriend in Kenya.
The 33-year-old athlete, who competed in the Paris Olympics, suffered over 75 percent burns during the attack by her lover.
Cheptegei’s death made her the third sportswoman killed in Kenya within the last three years.
Donald Rukare, president of Uganda Olympics committee confirmed her death in a post he shared on his social media handle on Thursday.
“We have learnt of the sad passing on of our Olympic athlete, Rebecca Cheptegei… following a vicious attack by her boyfriend’
“May her gentle soul rest in peace and we strongly condemn violence against women,” he said.
The runner, who finished 44th in Paris, was admitted to a hospital in the Kenyan Rift Valley city of Eldoret after she was attacked.
Cheptegei “passed today morning at 5:30 am after her organs failed,” Owen Menach, senior director of clinical services at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, adding that a full report regarding the circumstances of her death would be released on Thursday afternoon.
Kenyan Sports Minister, Kipchumba Murkomen, described the athlete’s death as a loss “to the entire region”.
“This tragedy is a stark reminder that we must do more to combat gender-based violence in our society, which in recent years has reared its ugly head in elite sporting circles,” he said in a statement.
Peter Ogwang, Uganda’s minister of state for sports, said Kenyan authorities were investigating the killing, which has shone a spotlight on violence experienced by women in the East African nation.
The Uganda’s athletics federation are also calling for justice to be served in the case of Cheptegei and for other victims.
Joan Chelimo, one of the founders of the non-profit, told newsmen that female athletes were at high risk of exploitation and violence at the hands of men drawn to their money.
“They get into these traps of predators who pose in their lives as lovers,” she said.
In October 2021, Olympian runner Agnes Tirop, a rising star in Kenya’s highly competitive athletics scene, was found dead in her home in the town of Iten, with multiple stab wounds to the neck.
Ibrahim Rotich, her husband, was charged with her murder and has pleaded not guilty. The case is ongoing.
The 25-year-old’s killing shocked Kenya, with current and former athletes setting up ‘Tirop’s Angels’ in 2022 to combat domestic violence.
A report by UN Women and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said that in 2022, African countries collectively recorded the largest number of killings of women, both in absolute terms and relative to the size of the continent’s female population.
The 2022 survey found that 41 percent of married women had faced violence.
Nearly 34% of Kenyan girls and women aged 15-49 years have suffered physical violence, according to government data from 2022, with married women at particular risk.
