Refugees cry genocide as Kenya's Rift Valley erupts

At a flaming road block manned by drunken youths wielding machetes, arrows and nailed-studded sticks, two overturned metal containers block the route out of town.

One reads: "Kibaki must go" and the other "No Raila, No Peace."

As Kenya enters a fifth day of protests and ethnic violence that have killed more than 300 people following the re-election of President Mwai Kibaki, many of Eldoret's disaffected youth are furious at what they say was a stolen vote.

Opposition leaders say the count was rigged and have called for peaceful demonstrations. But their followers have rarely paid attention.

Angry pro-opposition mobs from the Kalenjin tribe that populates most of this part of Kenya's Rift Valley want blood.

"If there must be war, there shall be war," said a man in a torn sweater giving his name only as Dixon, after scraping his machete against the tarmac until sparks flew off it.

"We're ready to fight the government for our rights. Even the police, we'll kill them," he shouted to rapturous applause from cohorts shaking their fists, the air pungent with their alcoholic breath.

Others say it is history repeating itself. Political mayhem became cover for violence against Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe in the Rift in 1992 and 1997 elections, when some Kalenjin politicians now in opposition were fervent backers of the ruling party.

"This happens around every election. It is called ethnic cleansing to hide the fact it is genocide, and because of that, everyone who is guilty escapes justice," said Kihumbu Thairu, professor of medicine at Moi University.

MURDEROUS GANGS

Thairu escaped to Nairobi from Eldoret, shortly before his house was stormed by machete-wielding youths late on Wednesday. The attackers then burned down several homes in the area.

Kibaki's government and its allies have also called it genocide, planned by opposition leaders who should be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court.

Thousands of Kikuyus have been forced to flee as murderous gangs go on the rampage and loot, and strike at a tribe that has dominated political and economic life in the country since independence in 1963.

In the worst such attack, a mob besieged a church on Tuesday in Kiambaa, just outside town. They locked scores of people inside then set it alight, burning about 30 people to death.

Overstretched -- or unsympathetic -- police have seemed powerless to stop the violence. At least a dozen Kikuyu villages have been burned to the ground, residents said.

An old women carried what she said was her only remaining possession -- a mattress -- away from a scene of devastation strewn with charred buildings and gardens reduced to ash.

Witnesses said bodies dumped in a local mortuary from killings were festering and a mob had tried to burn Moi University. Police said they could not give a death toll from the Rift Valley region, while aid workers said it was sure to rise higher than the 30 deaths from the church.

After taking refuge in the police station for days, many civilians fled Eldoret on a convoy of vehicles protected by a couple of truckloads of armed police on Thursday.

A Reuters reporter saw about 150 vehicles carrying thousands of people from town laden with furniture.

"What is happening here is not electoral violence, it is genocide," said Earnest Mwaniki, a lecturer at Eldoret's Moi University, as he prepared to board a bus to Nairobi.

"They want to cleanse all the Kikuyu from this place."