NAIROBI - An Arsenal fan in football-mad Kenya hanged himself following his team's 4-1 aggregate drubbing by arch-rivals Manchester United in the Champions League semifinal, police said yesterday.

NAIROBI - An Arsenal fan in football-mad Kenya hanged himself following his team's 4-1 aggregate drubbing by arch-rivals Manchester United in the Champions League semifinal, police said yesterday.

Suleiman Alphonso Omondi, a 29-year-old Kenyan living in the capital Nairobi's Embakasi neighbourhood, hanged himself in his Arsenal shirt late Tuesday after the match, police said.

"We were watching the match at Bamba 70 pub, and when Arsenal was defeated, Suleiman just walked out in protest and he was crying," Calvin Otieno, one of his friends, told AFP.

"We didn't know he was going to hang himself until this morning when we received the reports and found his body on the balcony."

Arsenal slumped to a 3-1 defeat at home in the second leg of the Champions League semifinal, capping a disappointing season for the Gunners who were already out of the Premier League title race.

Football-related domestic tragedies are frequent in the region, where English clubs enjoy passionate following and European games draw more attention than national and continental games. - AFP