Kenya's Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said on Thursday that protests this week were "terrorism disguised as dissent," accusing demonstrators of attempting to carry out a coup against the government.

The number of those who died during Wednesday’s nationwide protests has doubled to 16, according to the state-funded human rights commission.

Property was also destroyed in the protests that attracted thousands of frustrated young Kenyans. At least two police stations were razed down by angry protesters.

"What unfolded yesterday was not a protest. It was terrorism disguised as dissent," Kipchumba Murkomen, interior cabinet secretary, said in a televised speech.

‘Criminal anarchists’

"We condemn the criminal anarchists who in the name of peaceful demonstrations unleashed a wave of violence, looting, sexual assault and destruction upon our people," he added.

In Nairobi's business district, the epicentre of the unrest, entire shopping centres and thousands of businesses were destroyed, many still smouldering on Thursday.

At least two banks had been broken into, while businesses ranging from supermarkets to small electronics and clothing stores were reduced to ashes or ransacked by looters.

At least two families have identified their deceased kin at the Nairobi mortuary. One relative, Fatma Opango, told local media that her 17-year-old nephew was gunned down in Rongai area in the outskirts of Nairobi.

“I came across his photo in a group online and I started searching for him at the hospitals hoping he had survived,” she told journalists at the mortuary.