At least 125 people have been killed in Kenya, according to media reports Monday, amid clashes between rioters and police over a disputed presidential election that has plunged one of Africa's most stable nations into chaos.

Looters run past burning shacks in a Nairobi slum Monday during riots related to Kenya's election.
(Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)

The death toll — based on police and witness reports of people killed in protests since the election results were announced Sunday — was compiled by Kenyan broadcaster KTN and the Associated Press.

Police fired tear gas and live rounds into a crowd of tens of thousands of opposition supporters Monday as the protesters tried to move out of Nairobi's vast slums and into the city centre.

Heavily-armed police held running street battles in the largest of the city's slums, which more than one million people call home, said reporter Steve Bloomfield of the British newspaper The Independent.

"There were scores of paramilitary police streaming into the slums and attacking people at random," Bloomfield told CBC News in a telephone interview from Nairobi.

Also on Monday, Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga compared the country's incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, to a military dictator.

"There is no difference between him [Kibaki] and Idi Amin and other military dictators who have seized power through the barrel of the gun," said Odinga, who encouraged citizens to join his followers in a "peaceful mass action" to protest the disputed outcome.

Police also cordoned off Nairobi's Uhuru park, where the opposition leader's supporters planned to hold their own swearing-in ceremony.

The Associated Press also quoted several unidentified police officers as saying they were under shoot-to-kill orders to quell the protests. A government spokesman denied such an order was given.

Kibaki vowed to step up security across the country to "deal decisively with those who breach the peace."

Tribal divisions

The BBC reported the bodies of at least 43 people — including those of two women and three children — piled up at the local hospital morgue in the western town of Kisumu. Many of the bodies had gunshot wounds, the BBC reporter on the scene said.

Mwai Kibaki was re-elected in the closest national election in Kenya's history, a vote marred by allegations of vote-rigging.
(Sayyid Azim/Associated Press)

Kibaki, 76, was sworn in for another five-year term Sunday immediately after elections chief Samuel Kivuitu announced the results on television. He said Kibaki beat Odinga, 62, by 231,728 votes in the closest race in Kenya's history.

Within minutes of the announcement, the slums — home to tens of thousands of opposition supporters — exploded into fresh violence, much of it driven by tribal divisions.

Deadly clashes had already seized the country for two days while Kenyans awaited the results of the election.

The bloodshed was a stunning turn of events in one of the most developed countries in Africa, with a booming tourism industry and one of the continent's highest growth rates.

Many observers saw the campaign as the greatest test yet of this young, multi-party democracy and expressed great disappointment as the process descended into chaos.

"We have been rigged out, we are not going to accept defeat," 24-year-old James Onyango, who lives in the Kibera shantytown, said Monday. "We are ready to die, and we're ready for serious killings."

Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, the chief European Union election monitor, said the Electoral Commission of Kenya "has not succeeded in establishing the credibility of the tallying process to the satisfaction of all parties and candidates."

'A lot of people have been killed, chopped up' 

Odinga, a firebrand opposition candidate, led early results and public opinion polls. He rejected the results, which even the elections chief acknowledged were problematic. In one constituency, voter turnout added up to 115 per cent, and a candidate ran away with ballot papers in another.

Tribal clashes raged in the slums. Kibaki belongs to the Kikuyu tribe, while Odinga is Luo.

Selina Angeyo, 14, a Kibera resident, said police had shot her brother in the stomach, along with another man.

An Associated Press reporter saw another man who had been shot in the head being carried in a blanket. The men around him said they were taking him to the mortuary after he had been shot by police.

"We have coexisted in this slum in peace," said Mercy Akinyi, 20, a resident of Mathare. "Now that the politicians are fighting, does that mean killing each other?"

Kibera resident Teddy Njoroge said by phone, "It is tribal war in my area … a lot of people have been killed, chopped up."

With files from the Associated Press