NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's opposition claimed victory on Saturday in a presidential vote after official figures gave their candidate a four percentage point lead over President Mwai Kibaki on three-quarters of the count.
Delays announcing the results ignited deep ethnic tensions in east Africa's biggest economy, as youths wielding machetes fought, looted and burned homes in opposition strongholds.
"Honourable Raila Odinga is therefore the winner and fourth president of the Republic of Kenya," Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) vice-presidential candidate Musalia Mudavadi told reporters, citing his party's own tally.
Kibaki's party, hoping to land their man a second five-year term, scoffed at the claims and said it would wait for the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK).
"Kangaroo results given by any Tom, Dick or Harry deserve every contempt," said a Party of National Unity (PNU) spokesman.
ECK chairman Samuel Kivuitu urged restraint by ODM: "How many times have we met mad people on the road saying 'I own this shop,' and the man has no trousers? ... I can even announce that I am president of Kenya. Will that make me president of Kenya?"
Official results, however, showed Odinga heading for a win.
The ECK gave him 3.73 million votes or 49 percent on its count from 159 of 210 constituencies. Kibaki had 45 percent.
Odinga had led early tallies, but as Kibaki began to narrow the gap overnight the opposition said it feared ballot fraud.
Most of Saturday's trouble was between Luo supporters of Odinga and members of Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group, which have a long history of rivalry in Kenya's four decades of independence.
"We are sensing a plan to rig the elections," taxi cyclist Eric Ochieng, 18, said in the middle of riots in western Kisumu city, in Odinga's homeland. "We will not accept this," he told Reuters as smoke billowed overhead.
FATHER'S DREAM
From early morning, hundreds of youths took to the streets of Kisumu - a normally sleepy city on the shores of Lake Victoria - burning tyres, ransacking shops and blocking roads.
