Kenyan men from the Luo tribe armed with machetes and rocks enforce a makeshift roadblock, searching passing vehicles for Kikuyus trying to flee the town in order to kill them, on the main road to the Ugandan border near the airport in Kisumu, Kenya, yesterday. Angry young men blocked roads out of the town, set some houses and buses ablaze and one driver was burned alive in his minibus, according to a witness. - AP

NAIVASHA, Kenya (AP):

Hundreds of people from rival tribes confronted one another on a main road of Kenya's flower capital yesterday, hefting machetes, clubs and rocks and retreating only when a handful of police between them fired live bullets into the air.

It was unclear whether the officers would be able to keep them apart.

Ethnic clashes are continuing to convulse western Kenya, as gangs fought with crude weapons and set homes ablaze in this tourist gateway, pushing the death toll from a month of violence over the country's flawed presidential election to nearly 800.

Bloodshed

The bloodshed with Sunday marking exactly one month since the December 27 vote has transformed this once-stable African country, pitting long-time neighbours against one another and turning towns where tourists used to gather for luxury holidays into no-go zones.

It also complicated the task of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the latest international mediator trying to bring together President Mwai Kibaki and his chief rival.

While ethnic clashes have accompanied past Kenyan elections, the scale of the violence this year has been far worse. It has mainly pitted other ethnic groups, which support the opposition because they feel marginalised, against Kibaki's Kikuyu people.

"We have moved out to revenge the deaths of our brothers and sisters who have been killed, and nothing will stop us,'' said Anthony Mwangi, hefting a club in Naivasha on Sunday. "For every one Kikuyu killed, we shall avenge their killing with three.''

Kikuyus were the main victims in the initial eruption of violence, with hundreds killed and more than half of those driven from their homes belonging to Kibaki's tribe. Now, however, it appears the Kikuyus are looking for revenge.

Some 55 bodies were counted Sunday at the morgue in Nakuru, the provincial capital of Kenya's fertile Rift Valley, where ethnic clashes erupted late Thursday, said a morgue attendant who asked that his name not be used because he was not authorised to speak to the media.