Kenya 'facing Humanitarian Disaster'

Aid agencies today warned of a humanitarian disaster in Kenya as post election violence escalated amid claims of "ethnic cleansing" by rival tribes.

The Kenya Red Cross said up to 100,000 people had so far been displaced. According to Kenya's Human Rights Commission, more than 300 have been killed.

Abbas Gullet, the secretary general of the Kenya Red Cross, described the situation as "national disaster", adding: "A few hundred thousand will need assistance for some time."

In the worst incident, up to 50 ethnic Kikuyus were burned alive as they sheltered in a church in the Rift Valley city of Eldoret.

Eyewitness reports of victims being hacked as they fled echoed those from the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in which more than 500,000 people were killed.

Red Cross officials visiting the Moi University hospital, in Eldoret, reported seeing people who had suffered gunshot and arrow wounds. "The hospital is overwhelmed with the number of casualties," Gullet said.

"One tribe is targeting another one in a fashion that can rightly be described as ethnic cleansing," an unnamed senior police official told the AFP news agency.

The government of the disputed president, Mwai Kibaki, has accused supporters of the opposition leader, Raila Odinga, of organising the violence. Odinga accused the government of "genocide."

Gullet reiterated international pleas for both leaders to urge their follows to stop the violence.

The UN's humanitarian information service reported that 30 checkpoints had been set up between Burnt Forest and Eldoret by vigilantes.

More than 5,000 people have fled to Uganda. "If you are not of the right ethnic group, it's no go," one Red Cross official was reported as saying.

In Nairobi's slums, which are often divided along tribal lines, rival groups have been fighting each other with machetes and sticks. After a brief lull in the violence, sporadic clashes broke out again in the sprawling Mathare area last night.

One resident, Livingstone Wesonga, said ambulances had been unable to reach the area because of the violence. Asked why he had not fled with his family, he replied: "Where can I take them? Every place is not safe because this thing is spreading."

John Okello, a doctor, said clinics around the city were running short of basic materials such as white gauze because so many people had been arriving for treatment suffering from machete wounds.

Accounts of the fire at the church in Eldoret have continued to emerge. A mob of around 2,000 arrived at the building, George Karanja, whose family had sought refuge there, said.

"The mattresses that people were sleeping on caught fire. There was a stampede, and people fell on one another," he said.

The 37-year-old helped rescue at least 10 people from the flames, but added: "I could not manage to pull out my sister's son. He was screaming ... he died." First aid workers were stopped by vigilantes who challenged them to declare their ethnicity.

There are more than 40 tribes in Kenya. The largest, the Kikuyu, Kibaki's tribe, is accused of using its dominance of politics and business to the detriment of others.

Odinga is from the Luo tribe, a smaller but still major tribe that claims it has been marginalized.

While Kibaki and Odinga have support from across the tribal spectrum, those responsible for the violence see politics in strictly ethnic terms.