Kenya's opposition party leader vowed to push forward with a banned protest in the country's capital Thursday, amid fears that the march could worsen a wave of brutal political and ethnic violence.

Opposition supporters hold machetes and crude weapons next to a poster of opposition leader Raila Odinga on Wednesday during riots in the Mathare slum in Nairobi, Kenya.
(Karel Prinsloo/Associated Press)

Tribal factions have been locked in a deadly dispute over Kenya's Sunday presidential election, sparking violence that has killed more than 300 people and displaced as many as 100,000 people.

Despite a government ban, opposition leader Raila Odinga said he would go ahead with a protest in Nairobi, setting the stage for clashes between hundreds of thousands of his supporters and security forces.

Odinga told the Associated Press Wednesday his rally was intended as a peaceful attempt "to communicate to our people, to inform them where we are coming from, where we are and where we want to go."

International pressure mounted on both President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Odinga Wednesday to settle their differences peacefully, as each side accused the other of genocide.

The United Nations cited Kenyan police as saying about 70,000 people have been displaced from their homes after intense fighting between tribal factions following the inauguration of President Mwai Kibaki on Sunday. However, the Norwegian Refugee Council pegged the figure at more than 100,000.

Kibaki, 76, was sworn in immediately after the election results were announced on television, despite allegations by opposition leader Raila Odinga's party that the vote was rigged.

In a joint statement released Wednesday citing "different independent sources," the Kenya Human Rights Commission and the International Federation for Human Rights put the death toll in violence since Sunday at more than 300, Reuters reported.

50 people died in church burning

On Tuesday, as many as 50 people died after a church in the Rift Valley city of Eldoret, sheltering hundreds of Kenyans, most of them from the Kikuyu tribe, burned to the ground. The president is Kikuyu. 

Witnesses said an angry mob doused the church with gas and set it ablaze.

"It has been one way all the way. It is basically Raila Odinga-led ethnic cleansing of the Kikuyu," government spokesman Alfred Mutua told the BBC Wednesday.

Most of Nairobi was calm on Wednesday, but shots rang out in the Mathare slum, where police escorted terrified families to safety as fire tore through shacks.

Mutua downplayed the violence, saying it had only affected about three per cent of the country's 34 million people.

"Kenya is not burning and not at the throes of any division," he said. Mutua said the security forces had arrested 500 people since the clashes began.

The Kikuyu people, Kenya's largest ethnic group, are accused of using their dominance of politics and business to the detriment of others.

Human rights groups in Kenya have said Kikuyus were immediately targeted following the election, but there are numerous reports of reprisal attacks on the country's Luo population.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Associated Press, Odinga, who comes from the Luo tribe, accused Kibaki's government of being "guilty, directly, of genocide."

Kibaki's government, however, charged Wednesday that the attacks were orchestrated by Odinga's party before the presidential vote, Reuters reported.

"It is becoming clear that these well-organized acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing were well planned, financed and rehearsed by Orange Democratic Movement leaders prior to the general elections," said the statement read by Lands Minister Kivutha Kibwana on behalf of his colleagues.

Opposition leader refuses meeting

Kibaki invited all members of the new parliament to the State House in Nairobi on Wednesday, but Odinga and opposition MPs refused to meet with his rival and demanded outside mediation to resolve the impasse.

"We cannot dialogue with a thief," Odinga told reporters. "We are not interested in talking with Kibaki without international mediation."

The accusations came a day after Kenyan election commission chairman Samuel Kivuitu said he was pressured to announce the election results quickly.

Some residents have attempted to cross into neighbouring Uganda, while others are entering churches and police stations, freelance reporter Richard Lough told CBC News on Wednesday from the capital Nairobi.

"Right now, people don't feel safe anywhere," Lough said.

Echoes of Rwanda

The United States and Britain, Kenya's former colonial ruler, issued a joint statement citing serious irregularities in vote-counting and urging the two sides to work together to end the violence.

"It is clear that there are major responsibilities on Kenya's political leaders both in respect of the violence that is being perpetrated by some of their followers and in respect of the need to reach out and find common ground for a country … that is obviously deeply divided," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the BBC on Wednesday.

Canada's Foreign Affairs Department has issued a travel warning to Canadians advising against "non-essential travel" to Kenya, according to its website.

Aid agencies have said they can't reach many of the injured in the country's western provinces, an opposition heartland where much of the violence has occurred.

Many observers fear that Kenya, once viewed as one of Africa's most stable nations, could descend into ethnic violence similar to that of Rwanda in 1994, during which more than half a million people were killed.

The head of the African Union, Ghanaian President John Kufuor, was to travel to Nairobi on Wednesday to help mediate the post-election conflict, but Kufuor's press office said the leader had cancelled the visit. They gave no explanation.

While Kibaki won the presidential vote, most of his cabinet lost their parliamentary seats. Odinga's party won a majority of seats.

The discrepancy between the parliamentary and presidential results, unexplained delays in vote counting and anomalies that included a 115 per cent turnout in one constituency have fuelled allegations of rigging.

With files from the Associated Press