NAIROBI - Kenyan police fired teargas to disperse stone-throwing youths at a funeral on Wednesday held by the opposition for slum residents killed in a crackdown on protests against President Mwai Kibaki's disputed election.
Several teargas canisters landed in the large football field in Nairobi where coffins were laid out and opposition leader Raila Odinga was winding up his oration.
"This is a war between the people of Kenya and a small clique of very blood-thirsty people who want to cling on to power at all costs," Odinga told the crowd of mourners as violence was erupting on a road outside.
"Let us stand as one people to liberate our country."
The latest trouble came as former U.N. chief Kofi Annan was to begin talks with Kibaki and Odinga to resolve a bloody stalemate that threatens to wreck the east African nation's image as a stable democracy and flourishing economy.
Adding to a death-toll of about 650 since the December 27 election, at least two more people were killed in a Nairobi slum during the morning in the latest ethnic clashes since the vote.
Odinga says Kibaki stole the narrow victory, which has split the country of 36 million down the middle.
Police had eased a ban on public demonstrations, in place since Kibaki's December 30 swearing-in prompted rioting and looting, to permit a memorial led by the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) for what it called 28 "freedom fighters."
The day began peacefully as hundreds of supporters marched from near the Kibera slum, a stronghold of Odinga's Luo tribe, carrying coffins of people they say were shot by police there.
But the event turned violent when about a dozen youths on a major highway outside stopped some cars, smashed windows and beat occupants who did not belong to their Luo tribe.
Police moved in but held fire, witnesses said, as a growing crowd of youths threw rocks at them. They eventually responded with charges and fusillades of teargas, some of which landed in the field, terrifying mourners and scattering ODM leaders.
