Kenyan police fired teargas and water cannon on Thursday at thousands of anti-government protesters chanting "Peace" and singing the national anthem as they tried to march to a banned rally.
"This is dictatorship now," protester Julius Akech shouted, in the latest bout of unrest in a week of tribal and political violence in which more than 300 Kenyans have been killed.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga vowed to defy police and go ahead with the rally against President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election in Kenya, East Africa's biggest economy and a key ally of the West in its efforts to counter al Qaeda.
Thousands poured out of the pro-opposition Kibera slum and other shanty towns after dawn to head for Nairobi's Uhuru Park, or Freedom Park in Swahili, for the planned million-strong rally that Kibaki's government has banned.
When they were stopped by riot police, some protesters -- wearing white scarves, waving leaves and singing the national anthem -- sat in streets, blocking traffic.
Police used teargas and water cannon. They also fired in the air as, in one case, the crowd kneeled, shouting "Kill us all."
Each side has accused the other of genocide in a week of violence that has shocked world leaders and choked supplies of fuel and other goods to a swath of central Africa.
There have been international calls for reconciliation in a nation that had become known as a vibrant democracy and peacemaker in Africa, rather than a trouble spot.
Calling Kibaki a "thief" who had carried out "a civilian coup", Odinga told reporters he would, however, accept international mediation and proposed setting up an interim power-sharing government to prepare for a re-run of the vote.
"It should last no more than three months," he said.
"The people will not take this vote-rigging by the government lying down."
In rural areas, the unrest has touched off deep ethnic tensions. In an area where 30 members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe were killed in a church set on fire by a mob, young men with machetes manned roadblocks and hunted for their enemies.
TOURISM, ECONOMY HIT
The turmoil was likely to hurt tourism, Kenya's biggest earner worth about $800 million (403 million pounds) a year.
