NAIROBI, Jan 30: Kenya on Wednesday pledged tougher action to rein in post-election violence that threatens to spiral out of control, in the east African nation’s darkest moment since independence in 1963.

Protests over President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed re-election in the Dec 27 vote have degenerated into cycles of killing between rival tribes, and there is evidence of gangs being increasingly well organised on both sides.

The top US diplomat for Africa urged the political rivals to forge a compromise at mediation led by former UN chief Kofi Annan and said ethnic retaliation had “gone too far”.

“There has been an organised effort to push out people from Rift Valley ... it is clearly ethnic cleansing,” US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer said in Ethiopia.

Most of the deaths since the election came in attacks that at first targeted Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe, whose members are now taking revenge on pro-opposition tribes.

Police have also killed close to 100 protesters backing opposition leader Raila Odinga.

“Democracy is not defended by killing people and those who are behind the violence will be held to account in the future,”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament in London.

Kenyan Internal Security Minister George Saitoti said police would tolerate no more violence and would ensure the country’s roads and railways, economic lifelines for neighbouring nations, would remain open.

“We have decided to act tough this time. We are not going to allow criminals and hooligans to run around,” he said.

Youths have set up roadblocks across the Rift Valley in the past month, squeezing transport to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan, whose economies depend on Kenya’s Mombasa port. Announcing a $14 million fund to help Kenya’s 300,000 refugees from the violence, Kibaki also talked tough.

He urged victims of violence to avoid retaliation and rely on security agencies who were “under strict orders to take stern and firm action against those financing, inciting and engaging in actual acts of violence and sabotage”.

SHOOT-TO-KILL POLICY: The government on Tuesday demonstrated its willingness to apply heavier force, sending in two army helicopters to fire rubber bullets over a Kikuyu mob in Naivasha.