KENYA:The violence that has wreaked havoc in Kenya since elections last month escalated yesterday, with an opposition lawmaker murdered in Nairobi and police deploying helicopters for the first time to quell unrest.
Talks between the government and the opposition began under the auspices of Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary-general, but were overshadowed by the violence.
Mwai Kibaki's disputed victory in presidential elections, which was announced one month ago today, has ignited long-standing ethnic grievances over land, inequality and political marginalisation, and the resulting fighting has devastated Kenya's economy.
Raila Odinga, the opposition leader who claims he was robbed of the presidency, said yesterday: "The foundation of the state is crumbling . . . We did not in our darkest dreams ever imagine that women and children would be burned alive in our beloved Kenya."
Melitus Were, a newly-elected member of parliament for the opposition Orange Democratic Movement, was shot dead on Monday night as he drove to his house in Nairobi. Mr Odinga called it a "planned political assassination", but police and government officials cautioned there might have been another motive.
In Naivasha, a lakeside tourist town outside Nairobi, police helicopters were reported to have fired rubber bullets at a crowd of several hundred machete-wielding Kikuyus - members of Mr Kibaki's tribe - after up to 30 members of Mr Odinga's Luo tribe were killed there during the previous three days.
The attacks were thought to be revenge for hundreds of Kikuyu deaths in Rift Valley province in western Kenya, which has seen the worst violence. Across the country more than 800 people have died, including at least 10 yesterday, and 200,000 have been forced from their homes.
John Holmes, the UN's humanitarian chief, told reporters in Brussels yesterday: "What you fear is a downward spiral of violence, of attacks and counter- attacks and counter-counter-attacks on a tribal and ethnic basis which then becomes very hard to stop."
Kenya's economy and its role as a trade hub are being hit by the cycle of violence, which followed flare-ups in early January. Many economists had downgraded their economic growth estimates this year to 4-5 per cent from 7 per cent.
Parts of the country's railway have been torn up and its main commercial road from Nairobi to the Ugandan border was again blocked by young men yesterday, preventing the movement of consumer goods, local products and agricultural produce.
Betty Maina, chief executive of the Kenyan Association of Manufacturers, said: "Most of our members are predicting that in January they'll make maybe 50 or 60 per cent of the sales they'd normally make." The Kenyan shilling is trading close to a three-year low against the dollar and dealing on the Nairobi stock exchange was temporarily halted yesterday after the market fell 5 per cent.
The violence is tearing into Kenya's social fabric as people in ethnically-mixed areas are threatened by neighbours telling them to "go home" to the provinces in which their tribes are a majority.