64 killed as violence spreads in Kenya

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NAIROBI, Dec 31 (Agencies): Kenya's opposition leader compared President Mwai Kibaki to a military dictator Monday amid protests and violent clashes over an election marred by allegations that Kibaki stole the vote. Several people were shot as heavily armed police tried to contain demonstrations in Nairobi's slums. There is no difference between him (Kibaki) and Idi Amin and other military dictators who have seized power through the barrel of the gun," Raila Odinga said Monday.
Kibaki was re-elected and sworn in Sunday after the closest vote in Kenya's history. Within minutes of the announcement of the results, the slums - home to tens of thousands of opposition supporters - exploded into fresh violence, much of it tribal driven. Deadly clashes had already seized the country for two days while Kenyans waited for the results of the election.
The bloodshed was a stunning turn of events in 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 yet of this young, multiparty democracy and expressed great disappointment as the process descended into chaos.
"We have been rigged out, we are not going to accept defeat," 24-year-old James Onyango, who lives in the Kibera shantytown, said Monday. "We are ready to die, and we're ready for serious killings."
At least 64 people were killed overnight in western Kenya in post-election violence as angry opposition supporters clashed with police and rival tribal groups, police and officials said Monday. In Kisumu, Kenya's third city and a bastion of defeated presidential challenger Raila Odinga, a mortuary attendant said police brought in 46 bodies.
"These bodies were brought here overnight by police officers from various suburbs," the attendant told AFP.
"Of the 46, three are women and there are two infants," he said, adding that more than 20 of the bodies had multiple bullet wounds.
The morgue was surrounded by wailing relatives as police sent reinforcements to block slum dwellers from reaching the city centre.
"I heard gunshots and we scampered off to safety and I did not know where my son went. I have spotted my son's body with a gunshot wound in the stomach," said Mary Otieno, an elderly woman.
Reporters were also shown seven other bodies in the city's main hospital waiting to be transferred to the morgue.
Nyanza province police chief Grace Kaindi did not comment on the 46 bodies but admitted that police had opened fire on looters during the night.
"These are a group of young men who were causing mayhem at night, they refused to disperse, forcing police to use force on the looters," she said.
The latest deaths brought to 84 the number of people confirmed to have died since Thursday's general elections.
Incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner on Sunday after a disputed tallying process, but Odinga rejected the results, charging that the government had rigged them.
In the town of Nakuru, best known for housing the world's largest concentration of flamingoes, police said clashes also broke out between rival political supporters.
"We have recovered seven bodies in Nakuru estates and we are looking for more bodies," local police chief Stephen Munguti told AFP.
"They were not police killings but only fighting between rival political groups."
Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe is the country's largest but many across Kenya had rallied behind Odinga's Luo tribe in the election to bring an end to "Kikuyu rule", a trend observers had warned could trigger violence.
Further clashes between rival supporters in a village near Kapsabet also left four dead, police said.
"Four people were hacked to death in Cheber village" in the western Rift Valley province, a senior police commander told AFP. "It was fighting between rival political groups."
In Kisumu, Nairobi and several other cities in Kenya, life came to standstill where fighting was not taking place.
After almost of week of national holidays imposed by the government around December 27 the vote, some residents from impoverished neighbourhoods were running out of basic goods and started looting shops.
An AFP correspondents reported that residents of Mombasa, the country's second largest city which had been spared electoral violence, were breaking into groceries to find supplies.
The Nairobi slum of Kibera, Africa's largest shantytown, was among the first to erupt after the electoral commission announced the result Sunday.
Violence resumed there Monday when pro-Odinga supporters trying to converge on a rally called by their champion's party were repelled by riot police.
The demonstrators then lighting bonfires and hunting down members of the Kikuyu tribe in the slum alleys, police said.
The clashes were the worst in Kenyan cities since the failed 1982 coup against former dictator Daniel arap Moi.