Kenyan police fight opposition protesters

KISUMU, Kenya - Kenyan police fired in the air and used tear gas as hundreds of opposition protesters took to the streets on Wednesday in defiance of a ban on rallies against President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election.

In the western opposition stronghold of Kisumu and the coastal town of Mombasa, crowds gathered from the morning, some burning tires, building roadblocks and singing slogans.

Many Kenyans and expatriates stayed at home, shopkeepers nailed up windows, and traffic was thin in Nairobi, where some crowds were gathering from slums.

Police have outlawed the rallies, which the Opposition Democratic Movement (ODM) has called for three days.

More than 600 people have died and 250,000 been left homeless in the turmoil since Kibaki was sworn in after a December 27 vote that ODM leader Raila Odinga says was rigged.

Firing tear gas and wielding batons, police dispersed some 150 youths in Mombasa, scattering them briefly before they attempted to regroup, witnesses said.

In Kisumu, they fired in the air and also used tear gas to disperse about 1,000 demonstrators, some of whom threw stones.

"We want Kibaki to resign and pave the way for our rightful President Raila Odinga," said demonstrator Joel Oduor, coughing and crying from tear-gas in a western suburb of Kisumu.

Kenya's political crisis has caused a wave of violence, jeopardized its democratic credentials, angered donors, driven tourists away and hurt one of Africa's most promising economies.

Fuelling doubt over Kibaki's win -- officially by 230,000 of 10 million votes cast -- a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday it was impossible to know who won the presidency.

"We have done our own analysis. What it shows is that the result was extremely close and that whoever won probably won with no more than 100,000 votes at the most," Washington's ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, told the Daily Nation.

"It is really not possible to say with certainty who won because the process was not transparent." But he called for power-sharing rather than a new vote or re-count.