Kenya's Rift Valley burns, death toll soars

Protests erupted in western Kenya and machete-wielding mobs faced off in the Rift Valley on Monday after scores died in ethnic violence, complicating mediation efforts by former U.N. boss Kofi Annan.

In the normally peaceful Rift Valley town of Nakuru, a mortuary worker said on Monday that 64 corpses were lying in the morgue, all victims of the past four days of ethnic fighting.

Gangs from rival communities have been fighting each other with machetes, clubs, and bows and arrows in Nakuru and nearby Naivasha, both famous for their lakes teeming with wildlife.

In the worst incident of the latest flare-up, eight people were burned to death locked inside one house in Naivasha.

The violence since Kenya's Dec. 27 election has now gathered a momentum of its own - linked to decades-old land disputes, wealth inequalities and past British colonial rule - and pushed the total death toll beyond 800 people.

"It's very dangerous now. There seems to be much more of an organising hand behind it on all sides," Britain's Africa minister Mark Malloch Brown told the BBC on a visit to Kenya.

"This country is hurting. Its economy is way down."

The number of 250,000 refugees, from one of Kenya's darkest episodes since independence in 1963, looked sure to swell as thousands more fled the chaos in Naivasha and Nakuru.

In the pro-opposition western town of Kisumu on Monday, police fired teargas and bullets in the air as several thousand people took to the streets to complain about the deaths of members of their Luo ethnic community in the Rift Valley.

"Almost the whole of Kisumu is up in smoke," said Eric Odhiambo, a motorcycle taxi-driver. "People are mad at killings of Luo in Naivasha yesterday ... But there are so many rioters."

Residents said two protesters were shot dead.

The dispute over President Mwai Kibaki's re-election - which the opposition says was rigged - has plunged Kenya into a spiral of violence, battering its image as an east African trade and tourism hub and one of the continent's more stable nations.



OLD RIVALRIES

While the initial focus of protests was the tallying of the presidential vote, which local and foreign observers said was flawed, rivalries over land, business and power dating back to the beginning of independence have now come to the fore.

Analysts say colonial Britain's divide-and-rule policies among different communities created wounds that have festered since, and have been routinely exploited by politicians to muster support at election time.

Attacks in the immediate aftermath of Kibaki's win were mainly against his Kikuyu tribe - the largest and richest in Kenya - but members of that group, including the outlawed Mungiki gang, have begun fighting back, Kenyans say.

In Naivasha, a 1,000-strong group of mainly Kikuyus brandishing axes, sticks, machetes and hammers faced off with several hundred Luos - some of whom were also armed - asking to be allowed to leave the town, a Reuters witness said.

Dozens of riot police kept the two groups apart as they faced off right outside the Lake Naivasha Country Club, near the town's famous lake, usually a popular tourist attraction.

"We want these Luos to go back home. They chased and killed our people. Now we want the same thing to happen to them," said Kikuyu protester Joseph Maina, holding a plank of wood.

Reuters verified 19 deaths in Naivasha on Sunday.

A correspondent in the town heard screams into the night. Some locals were burning piles of furniture on the street.

Echoing earlier scenes in the Rift Valley when Kikuyus were targeted, mobs stopped cars on the main highway and demanded passengers' identity cards. One man was beaten before being kicked under the wheels of a minibus as it sped to safety.

Negotiators led by Annan have told the rival camps of Kibaki, and opposition leader Raila Odinga, to select four representatives each and study a blueprint for further talks in the next 24 hours, an official involved in the mediation said.

Government officials and watchdog Human Rights Watch accuse opposition leaders of organising attacks against Kikuyus in the Rift. The opposition has retorted that criminal gangs have been dispatched against their supporters.

Police said 254 arrests had been made overnight.

Annan visited trouble-spots over the weekend and said the crisis in Kenya had gone well beyond an electoral dispute.