Kenyan security forces crack down on violence

ELDORET, Kenya (Reuters) - Kenya's security forces have cracked down after a month of chaos and killings, but some residents in this Rift Valley town complain authorities are targeting opposition-affiliated tribes harder than others.

The government said this week it would halt violence, no matter who is involved, and when news spread on Thursday of the killing of an opposition politician, army helicopters were scrambled to Eldoret to head off possible riots.

Witnesses said what followed -- security forces on the ground opened fire on protesters, killing at least one and wounding about 20 -- came from nowhere.

"The shooting was careless and there was no provocation," said Amos, who saw an incident in Eldoret's Kapsoya neighborhood. He complained it was ethnically motivated.

"The Kikuyus are allowed to demonstrate and kill people ... But when we in the west demonstrate they sent people to kill us straight away."

Earlier this week mobs of Kikuyu -- the tribe of President Mwai Kibaki, whose disputed December 27 re-election touched off the worst ethnic violence in Kenya's modern history -- rampaged in the Rift Valley town Naivasha.

Army helicopters were sent there too, and fired rubber bullets over a Kikuyu mob to disperse them. Kenya's army also helped quell violence in similar clashes in nearby Nakuru.

The Kikuyus, who said the attacks were a response to opposition Kalenjin attacks on their tribe in other parts of the Rift, forced some 10,000 people from the mostly western Luo, Luhya and Kalenjin tribes to flee their homes.

Kikuyus were the first targeted in a wave of ethnic attacks which came minutes after Kibaki's re-election. The bulk of roughly 300,000 people forced to flee the clashes were Kikuyus or Kisiis, and many of them complained police stood by as they were attacked and their homes and possessions burned.

Both Kibaki's party and the opposition have accused each other of fuelling the situation. The opposition says Kibaki stole the election, and most observers say the vote was flawed.

BLOODY STREETS

The cycle of violence -- a combination of police shootings of opposition protesters and inter-ethnic attacks -- has killed over 850 people and unwound Kenya's reputation as a haven of stability and economic progress in a turbulent corner of Africa.

Attempts to convince the public that the legislator's killing on Thursday was the result of a love triangle failed and hundreds took to the streets in Eldoret, which largely rejected Kibaki in the election.

The hospital's emergency ward was full of patients on Friday morning, with most sharing a bed between two. Some who had been shot on Thursday were still awaiting operations.

Some residents said Kenya's army had also intervened but the police denied these reports.

"I was standing at my door. I was not demonstrating ... they were just shooting indiscriminately," said shopkeeper Bernard Malika, who was hit in the leg and was lying in his bed in the emergency ward of Eldoret's Moi Hospital.

Rights groups have accused police of excessive force and indiscriminate firing. But officials say they have only shot at criminals and looters.

Ethnic tensions and conflicts over land have long simmered in Kenya and are regularly exploited by politicians at election time. But they have never exploded on this scale.

(Editing by Bryson Hull and Michael Winfrey)