Nairobi - A Kenyan human rights activist who went missing a week ago has been found dead at a city mortuary after a botched abortion, police said Tuesday.

Caroline Mwatha was reported missing last week, prompting Amnesty International to raise the alarm over her disappearance, given her work lobbying against extra judicial killings by police.

A police source told AFP that Mwatha, who was five months pregnant, had died at a clinic where she had gone for the abortion.

The owner of the clinic, and a doctor, came forward and admitted that "they took the body to the mortuary and booked her under a different name and indicated she died of diarrhoea".

The source said police had seen text messages of her planning the abortion with the clinic owner.