KERICHO (Kenya): Youths burned hundreds of homes in a town in Kenya’s Rift Valley on Saturday, sending residents fleeing with all they could carry, despite an agreement between feuding politicians to end weeks of bloodshed.

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan brokered a deal between Kenya’s rival parties on Friday to take immediate steps to end post-election violence which has killed nearly 900 people and displaced more than a quarter of a million.

But the party leaders — President Mwai Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga — remain at loggerheads, with Kibaki repeating that he had been elected by a majority of Kenyans in a Dec 27 poll and saying the dispute must be settled by Kenya’s courts.“Mr Kibaki has, on the one hand, said that he is committed to the ongoing mediation process. On the other hand, he is undermining the process by saying the problems in Kenya can be resolved locally by court action,” Odinga said on Saturday.

Odinga says he would not get a fair hearing in court.

Kibaki told an African Union summit in Ethiopia on Friday Odinga’s party was to blame for deaths during more than a month of violence. Odinga said Kibaki was ultimately in charge of security and failed to ensure the safety of Kenyans.

As the politicians traded blame, violence continued.

Huge flames soared over slum dwellings belonging to members of Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe in the Rift Valley town of Kericho.

Residents dragged out mattresses, cupboards, suitcases and pots and pans, piling them onto carts.

“They say these buildings belong to a Kikuyu so they are burning them to tell them to go away,” said Victor Kemboi, one Kericho resident, as shacks smouldered behind him.

Some Kenyans fear that even if the politicians strike a power-sharing deal, they will struggle to control ethnic tensions which have taken on a momentum of their own.

“Let Annan do his bit but there’s going to be no resolution. The clashes will continue,” said one youth who gave his name as Lefty, manning a roadblock near Kericho where police opened fire to disperse protesters on Friday.

The conflict, which has often pitted Kibaki’s Kikuyu against other tribes supporting Odinga, has tarnished the image of a nation long seen as one of Africa’s more stable and with one of the continent’s most promising economies.

It has gone beyond a simple election dispute, taking the lid off decades-old divisions between tribal groupings over land, wealth and power, dating from British colonial rule and stoked by Kenyan politicians during 44 years of independence.

Near the town of Eldoret, north of Kericho, a mob surrounded the Great Harvest Evangelical Church, where at least two people were sheltering, and burned it to the ground on Saturday. A witness said those inside managed to escape unharmed.

“I don’t know who it was, but they broke the gate and came in. The pastor’s a Kikuyu, the plot belongs to a Kikuyu. Maybe that has something to do with it,” said Peter Kaguru, charred beams and bricks smouldering behind him.

West of Kericho, clashes broke out late on Friday between gangs from the Kisii and Kalenjin tribes after the shooting in Eldoret on Thursday of opposition legislator David Kimutai Too, a Kalenjin killed by a Kisii traffic policeman.

Police called it a crime of passion but the opposition said it was a political assassination. He was the second opposition deputy killed this week.

Pressure on the two sides to reach a deal is intense both from within Kenya and from the international community.

“Both parties now face a historic responsibility: choose dialogue or bear responsibility for a political and human catastrophe,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.—Reuters