Ethnic violence hits Kenya resort

Rival tribes wielding machetes, clubs and rocks clashed in Kenya’s resort town of Naivasha today, as the death toll from a month of ethnic violence topped the 800 mark.

Trouble also erupted in another western town, Kisumu, where similarly armed mobs set some houses ablaze.

“Kikuyus must go!” No Raila, no peace!“ they yelled, referring to the tribe of President Mwai Kibaki, and to his chief rival, opposition leader Raila Odinga.

The fighting began after President Kibaki’s December 27 re-election, which international and local observers say was rigged. About 255,000 people have been forced from their homes.

The bloodshed has transformed this once-stable African country, pitting long-time neighbours against one another and turning tourist towns into no-go zones.

It has also complicated the task of former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, the latest international mediator to try to bring together President Kibaki and Mr Odinga.

The fighting spread over the weekend to Naivasha, 55 miles northwest of Nairobi, a previously quiet tourist town with a stunning freshwater lake. It is also the centre of Kenya’s horticultural industry and a key flower-exporting area.

While ethnic clashes have accompanied past Kenyan elections, the scale of the violence this year has been far worse. It has mainly pitted other ethnic groups, which support the opposition because they feel marginalised, against President Kibaki’s Kikuyu people. Kikuyus, in turn, are calling for revenge.

“We have moved out to revenge the deaths of our brothers and sisters who have been killed, and nothing will stop us,” said Anthony Mwangi, waving a club in Naivasha yesterday. “For every one Kikuyu killed, we shall avenge their killing with three.”

At least 22 people were killed in the town over the weekend, said district commissioner Katee Mwanza, as Kikuyus set ablaze the homes of rivals from Mr Odinga’s Luo tribe.

At least five of them were burned to death in their homes, said Willy Lugusa, a police official. Others were hacked to death with machetes, a local reporter said.

Police, apparently overwhelmed, did not intervene. Gunshots rang out into the evening.

This morning, the two sides, numbering up to 1,000, faced off around the entrance to the Lake Naivasha Country Club. When they advanced, a few police officers holding a line between them fired live bullets into the air. They retreated, then regrouped.

Yesterday, looters used iron bars to smash the windows of shops belonging to non-Kikuyu businessmen, and made off with television sets, groceries and clothing.

Elsewhere, in Nakuru, the provincial capital of Kenya’s fertile Rift Valley, 55 bodies were counted yesterday at the morgue. Ethnic clashes broke out there Thursday.

Bodies were still arriving, although the running battles had largely cooled off. A local newspaper reporter saw another five bodies yesterday in two slums on the outskirts of Nakuru.

President Kibaki and Mr Odinga, meanwhile, remain far apart on how to resolve the crisis, the worst the country has suffered since it gained independence from Britain in 1963.

President Kibaki has said he is open to direct talks with Mr Odinga, but that his position as president is not negotiable. Mr Odinga says President Kibaki must step down and only new elections will bring peace.

Mr Odinga met Mr Annan yesterday, and opposition spokesman Salim Lone said they were asked to name three negotiators for the talks, which he said he would hopefully start “within a week.”