Blood in church as Kenya falls into tribal violence

By Tim Cocks

KIAMBAA, Kenya (Reuters) - Even as Kenya Red Cross staff cleared the last of the bodies from the church's smouldering remains, traces of the massacre still haunted it.

Pungent smoke rose from the blackened rubble where walls once sat. A brightly-patterned piece of a dress with burnt edges lay in ash. Underneath it: fragments of white bone.

About 30 Kikuyus died when a mob torched the church near Eldoret in the Rift Valley on Tuesday -- a slaughter evoking memories of ethnic violence usually associated with other countries in Africa, not one of its most stable.

"I saw them burn it," said Joseph Kwasila. "We ran away and they chased us to the main road. They were like lions in a rage, with sticks and machetes."

Thousands of President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe fled the region on Wednesday, running across the wastes of an ethnic battleground few Kenyans can believe is their country.

Violence has erupted across opposition strongholds in the east African nation over the results of a disputed presidential election that saw Kibaki just defeat challenger Raila Odinga amid accusations of rigging by both sides.

The death toll from four days of clashes has passed 300, rights groups said, in what the government called an opposition-led "genocide." The opposition says the government is to blame.

At the church in Kiambaa, a primarily Kikuyu village near Eldoret town, misshapen cooking pots and sandals lay next to a pile of charred, mangled bicycles blocking the entrance.