Kenya ethnic violence fears grow

Riot police are on patrol after fresh clashes in Nairobi's slums

Both sides in Kenya's disputed election have accused each other of ethnic violence as tens of thousands have fled their homes fearing further clashes.

At least 250 people have been killed, including 30 in western Kenya burned to death while sheltering in a church.

Many Kenyans have been taking refuge from armed mobs and looters as fears mount of further attacks and reprisals.

The African Union chairman is due in Kenya, as the US and UK add their voices to AU calls to end the violence.

Mwai Kibaki, who was officially re-elected president in Thursday's vote, and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who says he was robbed of victory by fraud, have both called for an end to the killing.

A government spokesman told the BBC that Mr Odinga's supporters are "engaging in ethnic cleansing" in an "organised, calculated manner".

Mr Odinga has countered in an interview with the Associated Press that Mr Kibaki's government was "guilty, directly, of genocide".

The majority of those killed in the church were Kikuyu, the same tribe as Mr Kibaki, and there have been reports of people being targeted on the basis of their ethnicity.

Abbass Gullet, secretary general for Kenya's Red Cross, told AFP that only those from "the right ethnic group" had been allowed through barricades in some places.

Correspondents say that although the election was more about economic and political issues than tribal ones, there is a danger that as the violence escalates it will take on more of an ethnic dimension.

Diplomatic push

Aid agencies are warning of a "humanitarian catastrophe" if the crisis is not defused.

African Union chairman John Kufuor is due to meet with Mr Kibaki on Wednesday amid growing international pressure to find a solution to the crisis.

The visit comes as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and UK Foreign Minister David Miliband issued a joint statement pointing to reports of "serious irregularities" in the vote count.

"The immediate priority is to combine a sustained call from Kenya's political leaders for the cessation of violence by their followers with an intensive political and legal process that can build a united and peaceful future for Kenya," the statement said.

Fear and looting

President Kibaki, who was swiftly sworn in on Sunday following Thursday's vote, said political parties should meet immediately and publicly called for calm.

But Mr Odinga said he would only hold talks once the re-installed president "publicly owns up that he was not elected".

Commuters travel by foot after police blocked roads to traffic

Those killed in the church in Eldoret were among hundreds believed to be sheltering there.

Witnesses said that a mob angry about the election result doused the church with petrol before setting it alight.

Residents of the town who have contacted the BBC have described an atmosphere of fear, with people sheltering as homes are set on fire and gangs of armed youths loot properties.

One woman told the BBC that she was locked in an orphanage in Eldoret.

"The older children have been told that they need to arm themselves just in case we might have to protect ourselves, so they've got batons, they've got anything they can find," she said.

Also on Tuesday there were reports of new street battles breaking out in Nairobi slums.

The Kenyan Red Cross has said that in the Rift Valley, at least 70,000 people have been displaced as a result of the unrest, describing it as "a national disaster".

Ugandan officials also reported hundreds of Kikuyu tribes people crossing the border from Kenya, AFP reported.

Commission 'pressured'

Mr Kibaki was declared the winner on Sunday after a controversial three-day counting process.

On Tuesday, election commission chairman Samuel Kivuitu said he had been under pressure to make the election results public from Mr Kibaki's Party of National Unity and a minor opposition party that recently split from Mr Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement.

"I was being pushed by PNU and ODM-Kenya to announce the results immediately," he said.

EU observers said the poll "fell short of international standards", and four Kenyan election commissioners have joined calls for an independent judicial body to re-examine the process.

But Finance Minister Amos Kimunya denied the fraud allegations.

He told: "I have no evidence that they were rigged. Anyone who has any information that they were rigged in one constituency or the other, or overall, let them subject it through the legal process."

Kenyan Police Battle Opposition After Kenyan Elections

Dec. 31: Police officers beat opposition supporters during riots in the Kibera slum in Nairobi.
AP

NAIROBI, Kenya — Police fired tear gas and bullets Monday as they struggled to contain tens of thousands of opposition supporters accusing President Mwai Kibaki of stealing his re-election. The death toll in the demonstrations and ethnic clashes rose to at least 125 people, police and witnesses said.

Three police officers said they had orders to shoot to kill, while opposition supporters said they would risk death to protest what they called a stolen election.

The vote ignited smoldering resentment between Kenya's two largest tribes, with supporters of Raila Odinga, a Luo who officially came in second, clashing with members of Kibaki's Kikuyu. The head of Kenya's Red Cross said many of the dead were killed in ethnic violence across the country.

The Kikuyu comprise the largest ethnic group in Kenya, and are frequently accused by other tribes of monopolizing business and political power.

Thousands of people struggling to break out of Nairobi's burning slums surged back and forth under clouds of tear gas, and were pushed back with water cannons and baton charges. Police fired live rounds over their heads. Opposition supporters blocked a road into the city center with blazing refuse and tried to set a gas station alight.

Alex Busisa, 22, said police shot him and a friend after he walked out of his home near a demonstration. He spoke from a hospital bed after an operation for a gunshot wound to the stomach.

While politicians "could afford a plane to fly away ... it is the man on the ground who suffers, like me," Busisa said.

Odinga compared Kibaki to a military dictator who "seized power through the barrel of the gun," and he postponed a rally planned for Uhuru Park after police warned the opposition not to hold it. Odinga instead called on a million people to gather Thursday in the park — where protesters demanded multiparty democracy in the early 1990s.

In the run-up to multiparty elections in 1992 and 1997, hundreds of people perceived to be opposition supporters were killed and thousands more forced off their land in politically manipulated violence in Rift Valley and Coast provinces. But there has been little violence on voting and postelection days in the past.

"We will inform police of the march. We will march wearing black armbands because we are mourning," said Odinga, who had been ahead in early voting results and public opinion polls.

Kibaki vowed to step up security across the country to "deal decisively with those who breach the peace."

Inside Nairobi's Kibera slum, riot police fired shots into the air and tear gas into homes and businesses.

An Associated Press reporter saw a man who had been shot in the head being carried out in a blanket. Men around him said he had been shot by police. Police were not immediately available for comment.

Panicked residents called journalists to report ethnic gangs were roaming the narrow, sewage-filled alleyways of Kibera, seeking to avenge members of their tribe killed in overnight violence and setting homes on fire.

"Why are we burning these shops?" asked 26-year-old Abdi Ochieng as he watched his Luo neighbors cart away looted sheets of corrugated iron from smoldering Kikuyu businesses. "Kibaki does not own them. Neither does Odinga."

The violence has killed at least 125 people since Saturday across the country, police and witnesses said, although the tally was likely far higher. The head of the Kenyan Red Cross, Abbas Gullet, said that in many provinces Kikuyu homes had been attacked and families forced to seek refuge in police stations.

"They need food, water, blankets, but we cannot access them," he said. Enraged demonstrators had even demanded to know the ethnicity of Red Cross workers offering first aid to the wounded, he said.

Kibaki, 76, was sworn in almost immediately after the results were announced. Within minutes, the slums exploded into violence.

Suspicions over rigging were fueled by the fact that the opposition took most of the parliamentary seats in Thursday's vote, but Kibaki still won the election. A ban on live media broadcasts and partial suspension of the news have spurred the rumor mill, with gossip spread by text message and shouted from neighbor to neighbor across barbed wire fences and winding alleys.

Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, expressed concern at the ban on live broadcasts and urged the government to ensure that journalists were free to carry out their work.

The Kenyan government "must abide by its international human rights obligations in responding to demonstrations," Arbour said, adding that "security forces must employ force only in proportion to the actual threat faced."

Echoing previous statements by the European Union, the United States said on Monday it was concerned over "serious problems" during the counting of votes.

The State Department on Monday suggested the U.S. is not ready to recognize any winner in the questionable election.

"We do have serious concerns about irregularities in the vote count," Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey, said. "We call on the political parties in Kenya, as well as the Kenyan people, to avoid violence."

"I am not offering congratulations to anybody because we have serious concerns about the vote count," Casey said. "What's clear is that there are some real problems here and that those need to be revolved in accordance with their constitution and in accordance with their legal system."

Britain's Foreign Office issued a travel advisory for Kenya, warning people against nonessential visits to many parts of the country and urban centers because of the "serious and continuing outbreaks of unrest."

Kenya is one of the most developed countries in Africa, with a booming tourism industry and one of the continent's highest growth rates. Many observers saw the campaign as the greatest test of this young, multiparty democracy and expressed great disappointment as the process descended into chaos.

Kibaki's supporters say he has turned Kenya's economy into an east African powerhouse, with an average annual growth rate of 5 percent. He won by a landslide in 2002, ending 24 years in power by the notoriously corrupt Daniel arap Moi. But Kibaki's anti-graft campaign has largely been seen as a failure, and the elections have reopened festering resentment over tribalism and widespread poverty.