NAIROBI - The overall death toll of Kenya post-electoral violence climbed to 328 after overnight violence yielded 22 more fatalities in the country's western towns, officials said on Wednesday.
"Four bodies were brought in the night and four others brought in at dawn. The bodies had bullet wounds," said a mortuary attendent in the western city of Kisumu, an opposition stronghold where the riots have been severe.
Two police officers were killed in the western town of Kericho when a group of youth armed with bows and arrows attacked them, a police official told AFP.
"The officers died on their way to hospital," he said.
Some 12 more bodies were overnight taken to a mortuary in Eldoret's Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, bringing the total number of dead people in the mortuary since polling day to 84, an hospital official said.
The 12 had been killed in the battlefields in the outskirts of Eldoret.
This brings the countrywide toll to least 328 people dead in politically related-violence since December 27 polling day, according to an AFP tally compiled from police, mortuary attendants and aid workers.
A Kenyan government security document put the death toll at 177.
"At least 177 people have been killed, 209 properties destroyed and 260 people arrested," a top government official told AFP, citing an official security briefing document prepared early Wednesday.
The official, who requested to remain unnamed, said police were still collecting figures across the east African nation that has seen its worst rioting since an 1982 coup attempt.
Rioting and tribal clashes intensified on Sunday after the electoral panel announced President Mwai Kibaki the winner, but opposition leader Raila Odinga has rejected the outcome.
The European Union electoral monitoring mission has said the polls fell short of international standards and called for an investigation while foreign governments have prevailed upon the rival leaders to open a dialogue.
bkb/nb
01/02/2008 13:03 GMT