NAIROBI, Jan 1: Thirty people were burnt alive in a church on Tuesday in Kenya, as an eruption of election violence threatened to tip over into a full-scale tribal conflict.More than 300 people have now died since Dec 27, 2007, presidential elections, which were narrowly won by the incumbent Mwai Kibaki amid allegations of vote-rigging from his defeated opposition challenger, Raila Odinga.

With Kibaki belonging to Kenya’s largest tribe, the Kikuyu, and Odinga to the second largest, the Luo, the violence has taken on a distinctly ethnic hue, with tit-for-tat killings and targetted arson attacks.

The victims of Tuesday’s blaze had taken refuge in the church in the western town of Eldoret in order to escape escalating tribal clashes.

“At least 30 burned to death,” a police commander said. Another 10 people died after their house was torched in the port of Mombasa which has witnessed several nights of inter-tribal killings.

Earlier on Tuesday, EU monitors said the elections had “fallen short” of international standards and urged an independent audit of the results, thus increasing diplomatic pressure on Kibaki who called for talks with opposition leaders to try and rein in the unrest.

Kibaki, 76, agreed in a statement “that leaders of political parties should meet immediately and publicly call for calm”. But Odinga said he would only talk once the president had acknowledged electoral fraud.

“We are ready to meet Kibaki as long as he publicly owns up that he was not elected,” he said.

While declaring that “the killing must stop”, Odinga vowed to press ahead with a mass rally in Nairobi on Thursday at which he plans to have himself inaugurated the “people’s president”.

A second consecutive night and day of conflict left more than 110 dead on Tuesday, with no end in sight to the unrest that has plunged one of Africa’s more stable democracies into an unprecedented crisis.

According to a tally compiled by AFP, 301 people have died in politically related-violence since polling day.

In the worst-hit region of western Kenya, some 70,000 people have been displaced by the unrest, according to the Kenya Red Cross whose secretary general, Abbas Gullet, described the situation as a “national disaster”.

Aerial video footage taken by the humanitarian group showed hundreds of houses on fire, farms set ablaze and road blocks every 10 kilometres.

Gullet said only those from “the right ethnic group” were allowed through the barricades.

Ugandan officials reported hundreds of Kikuyu tribesmen crossing the border from Kenya.

In London, Kenya’s former colonial ruler Britain sought to bring its diplomatic muscle to bear, backing Commonwealth and African efforts to resolve the political standoff.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he had spoken by telephone to both Kibaki and Odinga, urging them to work together.

“I want to see talks and I want to see reconciliation and unity. I want to see the possibility explored where they can come together in government,” Brown told reporters. The violence is the worst Kenya has witnessed since a failed 1982 coup.

Nairobi slum areas were overrun by rioters burning down shops belonging to members of the Kikuyu tribe and looting anything from refrigerators to basic goods.—AFP