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Violence also broke out Monday in another western town, Kisumu, where similarly armed mobs set some houses ablaze. Gangs set buses ablaze at the main downtown bus station, and one driver was burned alive in his minibus, according to witness Lillian Ocho.
A month of ethnic clashes roiling Kenya have claimed the lives of 800 people. The fighting began after President Mwai Kibaki's Dec. 27 re-election, which international and local observers say was rigged. About 255,000 people have been forced from their homes.
The bloodshed has transformed this once-stable African country, pitting neighbors against one another and turning towns where tourists used to gather for luxury holidays into no-go zones.
In Kisumu on Monday, young men blocked roads out of the town with burning tires and rocks.
"Kikuyus must go!" "No Raila, no peace!" they yelled, referring to the tribe of Kibaki, and to his chief rival, opposition leader Raila Odinga. Members of Odinga's Luo tribe are among those challenging the official election results, and in Kisumu some of them took out their rage on Kikuyus, including the bus driver who was burned to death.
"The road is covered in blood. It's chaos. Luos are hunting Kikuyus for revenge," said Baraka Karama, a journalist for state broadcaster Kenya Television.
Violence spread over the weekend to Naivasha, 55 miles northwest of Nairobi, a previously quiet tourist town with a stunning freshwater lake. It is also the center of Kenya's horticultural industry and a key flower-exporting area.
"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."
At least 22 people were killed in the town over the weekend, said district commissioner Katee Mwanza. Nineteen of them were Luos whom a gang of Kikuyus chased through a slum and trapped in a shanty that they set on fire, said police commander Grace Kakai. The others were hacked to death with machetes, a local reporter told The Associated Press.
On Monday morning, the two sides, numbering up to 1,000, faced off around the entrance to the Lake Naivasha Country Club. When they advanced, a few police officers holding a line between them fired live bullets into the air. They retreated, then regrouped.
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 On Sunday, looters used iron bars to smash the windows of shops belonging to non-Kikuyu businesspeople, and made off with television sets, groceries and clothing. One woman came screaming down the road from a blazing house.
"They set it on fire, they are killing my brother and sister," Alice Okoth said.
Two-thirds of the town of Timboroa was set ablaze in a pre-dawn attack Sunday that witnesses said left four dead.
Elsewhere, in Nakuru, the provincial capital of Kenya's fertile Rift Valley, 55 bodies were counted Sunday at the morgue, said a worker who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Ethnic clashes broke out there Thursday. Bodies were still arriving Sunday, although the running battles had largely cooled off.
National police Commissioner Hussein Ali told reporters in Nairobi that police had arrested 159 people in Nakuru and Naivasha "for possession of crude weapons and for suspected involvement in the murders." He also said 95 people were arrested in Nairobi, but gave no details.
Kibaki and Odinga, meanwhile, remain far apart on how to resolve the crisis, the worst the country has suffered since it gained independence from Britain in 1963.
Kibaki has said he is open to direct talks with Odinga, but that his position as president is not negotiable. Odinga says Kibaki must step down and only new elections will bring peace.
Odinga met with former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who is acting as a mediator, on Sunday. Opposition spokesman Salim Lone said they were asked to name three negotiators for the talks, which he said he would hopefully start "within a week."
[Associated
Press; By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY]
Copyright 2007 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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