Kenyan police talk to protestors during clashes between two rival groups in the streets of the Mathare slum in Nairobi, Kenya, Jan. 1.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan. 2--Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes amid brutal post-election violence in Kenya that had claimed at least 300 lives by Wednesday and threatens to descend into full-scale tribal conflict.
On Tuesday, at least 35 children and adults sheltering in a church near the western town of Eldoret were burnt alive by an angry mob in the worst incident since the December 27 presidential elections, which were narrowly won by the incumbent Mwai Kibaki amid allegations of vote-rigging by his defeated opposition challenger, Raila Odinga, reported AFP.
The violence is the worst Kenya has witnessed since a failed 1982 coup.
With Kibaki belonging to Kenya's largest tribe, the Kikuyu, and Odinga to the second largest, the Luo, the violence has taken on a distinctly ethnic hue, with tit-for-tat killings and targeted arson attacks.
"What I saw was unimaginable and indescribable," said the director of the Kenyan Red Cross, Abbas Gullet, after visiting several of the worst hit areas of western Kenya on Tuesday.
"This is a national disaster," he told reporters. "From the area we visited today there are roughly about 70,000 (displaced)."
Aerial video footage taken by the humanitarian group showed hundreds of houses on fire, farms set ablaze and road blocks every 10 kilometers (six miles).
Gullet said only those from "the right ethnic group" were allowed through the barricades.
Ugandan officials also reported hundreds of Kikuyu tribes people crossing the border from Kenya.
The victims of Tuesday's blaze were among some 400 people who had taken refuge in the church in order to escape escalating tribal clashes, survivors and police said.
They said an angry mob doused the Kenya Assemblies of God Church with petrol before lighting it.

GAZA CITY, Occupied Palestine, Jan. 2--An Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip killed six Palestinian militants early Wednesday, medics said, including three from the Hamas movement that has ruled Gaza since June.
The overnight helicopter strike near the border fence with Israel wounded another 11 people, AFP quoted Palestinian medics as saying.
Earlier reports indicated that the fighters were all members of the armed wing of Hamas, but in a statement released Wednesday the Islamist movement said only three of the fighters came from its own ranks.
Another two militants came from the Popular Resistance Committees, and the sixth was a member of the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad movement.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said there was an operation in the northern Gaza Strip during which Israeli troops returned fire after coming under attack from small arms and anti-tank rockets and before calling in aircraft.
The latest deaths bring to 6,020 the number of people killed since the start of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP tally.
Meanwhile, Israel's network of roadblocks will remain in place across the West Bank, the defense minister said Tuesday, sparking an outcry from Palestinians who say they cannot rebuild their economy until people and goods move freely, AP said.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak's comments soured an already tense atmosphere between Israel and the Palestinians just days before President Bush's first visit to the region as US president. Israeli construction in east Beit-ul-Moqaddas and the West Bank and violence between Israelis and Palestinians--and among Palestinians themselves--threaten to overwhelm Bush's peace efforts.
In a newspaper interview ahead of the visit, Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said for their own good, Israelis must consider giving up much of the West Bank and part of Beit-ul-Moqaddas to the Palestinians.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 2--Elections will be delayed by one month following the turmoil sparked by Benazir Bhutto's assassination, despite opposition threats of street protests unless the crucial vote is held Jan. 8 as originally planned, a top official said late Tuesday.
A senior Election Commission official told The Associated Press that the commission has agreed on a new date. He indicated it would not be before the second week of February, but refused to disclose the exact schedule before the formal announcement on Wednesday, AP said.
Opposition parties accused Pakistan's government of delaying parliamentary elections to avoid likely defeat and said Wednesday they feared the move could lead to more violence in a country still shaken by Bhutto's assassination.
Many believe Bhutto's party would get a sympathy boost if the vote takes place on time. Bhutto had accused elements in the ruling party of
plotting to kill her, a charge it
vehemently denies.
"We reject this delay outright," said Sen. Babar Awan from Bhutto's party, the most powerful opposition group. "(President Pervez) Musharraf fears outright defeat. If this election process is jeopardized, they (our followers) may protest again and there is a chance of riots."
The killing of Bhutto, a former prime minister, triggered three days of nationwide riots that killed 58 people and caused tens of millions of dollars in damage.
Bhutto's home province of Sindh was especially hard hit and the army was called on the streets. Ten election offices were burned.
"We need at least one month to make arrangements to hold free and fair elections after the damage caused to our offices in the Sindh province," the official said, adding that the commission already had consulted the main political parties about the delay. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the decision.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 2--The leaders of a US commission that examined the September 11, 2001 terror attacks accused the CIA Wednesday of having obstructed their investigation by withholding information about videotaped interrogations of terror suspects.
The goal of the blue ribbon 9/11 Commission, wrote chairman Thomas Kean and vice-chairman Lee Hamilton in The New York Times, was "to provide the American people with the fullest possible account" of what led to Al-Qaeda's attacks more than six years ago on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, reported AP.
But Kean and Hamilton wrote that although US President George W. Bush had ordered all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the probe, "recent revelations that the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot."
"Those who knew about those videotapes--and did not tell us about them -- obstructed our investigation."
They continued: "There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the CIA--or the White House--of the commission interest in any and all information related to Al-Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot.
"Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations," Kean and Hamilton wrote.
They said the panel made repeated, detailed requests to the spy agency in 2003 and 2004 for information about the interrogation of members of the extremist network but were never notified about the existence of the tapes.
The CIA revealed last month that in 2005 it destroyed videotapes that showed harsh interrogations of two Al-Qaeda members.

Afghan National Army soldiers gather at the site of a suicide attack in Kabul, Dec. 31.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 2--Roadside bombs and military operations in Afghanistan killed 19 people, including 14 Taliban fighters, as the record violence that Afghanistan saw in 2007 continued into the new year, officials said Wednesday.
According to AFP, Afghan and foreign troops killed eight suspected Taliban fighters Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, while a roadside bomb in the east's Khost province killed two Afghan security guards working for a US military base, an Afghan Defense Ministry statement said.
Five other militants were killed in separate incidents when roadside bombs they were planting exploded prematurely, the ministry said. Taliban militants killed an Afghan army officer and wounded another in Helmand province's Sarkono area, it said.
Police in Khost killed a would-be suicide bomber who was carrying hand grenades as he tried to enter a police checkpoint Tuesday, said Wazir Pacha, a spokesman for Khost's provincial police chief.
A roadside bomb in the south killed two border police in Kandahar province, said Gen. Abdul Razik.
Afghanistan experienced a record level of violence that killed more than 6,500 people in 2007, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Western and Afghan officials.
Afghan and foreign troops killed the eight suspected militants in Helmand's Musa Qala area, the statement said. Helmand, the world's largest poppy-growing region, has seen some of Afghanistan's worst violence in the past year.
British, US and Afghan troops forced the Taliban to flee the town of Musa Qala last month.
The militants had controlled the town and its surrounding areas for more than 10 months.
The guards were traveling in Khost province's Yaqoubi district when an explosion from the roadside device ripped through their vehicle, Pacha said.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Jan. 2--South African prosecutors said that ANC leader Jacob Zuma would be charged with corruption in a case due to start in August, a move that could jeopardize his chances of becoming South Africa's president.
"An indictment has been issued for trial in the Pietermaritzburg High Court commencing on Aug 4, 2008," said the statement from the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), Reuters reported.
"However the prosecution is ready to proceed at the earliest date on which the court may be able to accommodate this case, should the defense so wish."
Zuma was elected leader of the African National Congress last month after a bruising battle with the then incumbent ANC leader, South African President Thabo Mbeki.
The prospect that Zuma, the frontrunner to become South Africa's next president, could be embroiled in a lengthy trial that may overlap with the next general election in 2009 could heighten investor concerns about the country's stability.
Zuma recently told the BBC he would step down as ANC leader if he was found guilty in a trial. Many of his supporters have described the case as a conspiracy on the part of his political enemies to deny him the presidency.
The NPA denied the case was politically-motivated.
Mbeki fired Zuma as deputy president in 2005 as a result of the corruption scandal.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 2--A female suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest struck a checkpoint of neighborhood patrol volunteers in Baquba, capital of Iraq's restive Diyala province, killing 10 people and wounding eight on Wednesday, police said.
It was the latest in a wave of suicide bomb attacks that has appeared to intensify in recent days and weeks, even as overall levels of violence in Iraq have fallen, Reuters reported.
Two policemen and four patrol volunteers were among the dead, police said. Among those killed was Abdul-Rafaa Al-Nidawi, whom police described as the coordinator between US forces and the volunteer patrols in the city.
The mainly Sunni Arab neighborhood patrols, paid by US forces to oppose Sunni Al-Qaeda militants, have frequently been targeted by suicide bombers in recent months.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who is not believed to have direct control over the Iraqi militants that use his organization's name, threatened attacks against the patrol members in an audio tape released last week.