World mediators and civil society pushed for a peaceful solution to the crisis in Kenya on Wednesday, as post-electoral mayhem threatened to escalate into a tribal war, with thousands displaced and hundreds murdered.

The dispute over last week's presidential election has spurred Kenya's worst urban violence in 25 years, claiming at least 300 lives, and brought East Africa's largest economy to a standstill.

"What I saw was unimaginable and indescribable," said the director of the Kenyan Red Cross Society, Abbas Gullet, after visiting several of the worst hit areas of western Kenya on Tuesday.

"This is a national disaster," he told reporters. "From the area we visited today there are roughly about 70 000 (displaced)."

Aerial video footage taken by the humanitarian group showed hundreds of houses and farms set on fire and road blocks every 10 kilometres allowing people through based on their tribe.

Ugandan officials also reported hundreds of members of newly re-elected President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe crossing the border from Kenya, fearing death at the hands of mobs loyal to defeated challenger Raila Odinga.

Kibaki (76) was sworn in on Sunday despite widespread accusations of fraud, prompting opposition leader Odinga to claim he was the country's legitimate president.

On Tuesday, at least 35 children and adults sheltering in a church near the western town of Eldoret were burnt alive by an angry mob in one of the worst incidents since the December 27 election.

Survivors and police said an angry mob doused the Kenya Assemblies of God Church with petrol before lighting it.

With Kibaki belonging to Kenya's largest tribe, the Kikuyu, and Odinga to the second largest, the Luo, the violence has taken on a distinctly ethnic hue, with tit-for-tat killings and targeted arson attacks.

A beacon of democracy and stability

"One tribe is targeting another one in a fashion that can rightly be described as ethnic cleansing," said one senior police commander who declined to be identified.

The grim ethnic violence that erupted in recent days is unusual in Kenya, a country general considered a beacon of democracy and stability in the restive region, prompting civil society to invite all parties to reason.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband issued a joint statement urging Kenya's political leaders to call for a halt to the violence and engage in political dialogue.

"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.

The mass circulation Daily Nation issued a stark warning in the form of an editorial demanding urgent action to stop the spiralling violence.

"If no urgent step is taken to arrest the killings, Kenya is bound to sink into the abyss and join the ranks of war-torn countries like Cote d'Ivoire, Somalia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone and others which have experienced genocide on an unimaginable scale," the Daily Nation said.

The newspaper also carried a full-page appeal entitled "Give Peace and Dialogue a Chance" and signed by two Kenyans, the diplomat who mediated Somali peace and the general who brokered Sudan's north-south peace deal.

Independent probe into election results

With more than 110 people killed on Tuesday, 306 people have died in politically related-violence since polling day, according to a tally compiled by AFP.

EU monitors said elections had "fallen short" of international standards and urged an independent audit of the results, increasing diplomatic pressure on Kibaki.

The veteran statesman, who had been praised during his first five-year tenure for preserving Kenya's stability and developing its economy, called for consultations between political party leaders.

But Odinga, a 62-year-old former political prisoner who led almost all pre-election polls, said he would only talk once the president had acknowledged electoral fraud.

While declaring that "the killing must stop," Odinga also vowed to press ahead with a mass rally in Nairobi on Thursday at which he plans to have himself inaugurated the "people's president."

AFP

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