(Updates death toll) By Tim Cocks and Antony Gitonga NAIVASHA, Kenya, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Ethnic clashes killed at least 19 people in Kenya's Rift Valley on Sunday, overshadowing a meeting between former U.N. chief Kofi Annan and opposition leader Raila Odinga to try to resolve a month-long crisis. Naivasha District Commissioner Katee Mwanza told Reuters eight people were burnt and 11 others hacked to death, the latest victims of violence which has killed 750 people since a disputed election on Dec. 27. The running battles between members of President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe and Luos and Kalenjins who back his rival Odinga threatened to undermine mediation by Annan, who called on both parties on Sunday to name four officials for further talks. Odinga says Kibaki rigged the Dec. 27 polls while Kibaki says he is the duly elected president. Odinga blamed the government for trying to divert attention away from the electoral dispute and put the death toll in Naivasha higher, saying 30 people had been burnt to death. "What is now emerging is that criminal gangs, on a killing spree, working under police protection, are part of a well orchestrated plan of terror to spread and escalate the levels of violence," Odinga said in a statement. Two truckloads of soldiers were deployed as sporadic gunfire rang out and smoke poured from torched homes and vehicles. Barricades blocked Kenya's main western highway outside the town and police turned back cars heading towards the area. Shooting continued late into the day. Kenya's Red Cross said one house where people had sought refuge was torched but said a body count would only be completed in daylight on Monday. In a nearby home, a toddler on a chair wailed as the body of its mother lay in a pool of blood on the floor below. "It is as if every tribe is against us, and no one is protecting us," said Dominic Karanja, a Kikuyu watching troops dismantle roadblocks that he had helped build. Several shops including a nearby Internet cafe were looted and smashed and burnt computers littered the street outside. "SIMMERING HATE" The sudden slide of Naivasha and another previously quiet tourist town, Nakuru, into pitched tribal battles has deepened growing anxiety since the vote cast the country into chaos. "Let us not kid ourselves and think that this is an electoral problem. It's much broader and much deeper," Annan said after visiting parts of the Rift Valley on Saturday. A quarter of a million people have been forced from their homes by the unrest, which has shattered the east African nation's image of stability and damaged one of the continent's most promising economies. Alpha Oumar Konare, head of the African Union Commission, said the whole continent should act fast to end the crisis. "We in Africa cannot turn a blind eye when a tragedy is unfolding around us," he told African foreign ministers gathered in Ethiopia ahead of an AU summit this week. Many Kenyans say leaders on both sides of the political divide show few signs of addressing deep seated tribal rivalries over land, business and power -- many of them sown more than 45 years ago under British colonial rule. "The elections were just a veneer for hate that has simmered for years," wrote columnist Gitau Warigi in the Sunday Nation. On Thursday, Annan brokered the first talks between the two men since the troubles began, raising hopes. But the discussions prompted fresh verbal attacks by both camps, and that night Nakuru, the Rift's provincial capital, descended into chaos. Police said 31 people had been killed in the Nakuru area as tribal gangs clashed with machetes, spears and bows and arrows. Local media said the three-day death toll there could top 50. (Additional reporting by Joseph Sudah in Nairobi, Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Myra MacDonald)
Samuel, a 7-year-old boy from Kenya, plays in the yard of the "Save A Child's Heart" house in Azur near Tel Aviv January 27, 2008. Samuel is recovering from heart surgery ...
