One protester was killed in the western Kenyan town of Kisumu and thousands dispersed by teargas in a nationwide police crackdown to suppress opposition rallies against the bitterly disputed re-election of president Mwai Kibaki.
A crowd in Kisumu, carrying a coffin with Kibaki’s name on it, was broken up by police using teargas, gunfire and baton charges.
A Reuters cameraman reported seeing a corpse in the street, with bullet wounds in the back and side. The TV station KTN said the atmosphere in Kisumu was "chaotic".
Opposition leader Raila Odinga, whose supporters believe Kibaki rigged the vote, called for nationwide rallies over the next three days, in defiance of a government ban.
Plans for similar rallies earlier this month were canceled after protesters were beaten back by water canon, teargas and bullets.
In the coastal city of Mombasa, police hurled tear gas and used batons to beat back several groups of protesters, several-hundred strong, on the outskirts of the city.
The western city of Eldoret was reported to be quiet, though protesters there erected several makeshift roadblocks on the outskirts of town.
Protesters were again prevented from leaving Nairobi’s Kibera and Mathare slums. Elsewhere the capital was reported to be mostly calm with a heavy police presence on the streets, particularly around Uhuru Park where a rally was planned.
Some anti-government anger may have calmed after the election yesterday of an opposition candidate as parliamentary speaker, the third most powerful post in Kenya.
But Salim Lone, from Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement, said protests were planned for the next three days.
"We are going to keep up the pressure from every legal angle and through all peaceful means until the government agrees to acknowledge that the election results were false and that a solution must found to the political crisis," he said.
Foreign observers have said the presidential election, held on December 27, was deeply flawed. And although the electoral chief pronounced Kibaki the victor, he later said he had been pressured to release the results and did not know who won.
Michael Ranneberger, the US ambassador to Kenya, told the Daily Nation, that it was not clear who won, because the process was not transparent.
The post election violence has killed more than 600 people, and displaced more than 250,000.
Earlier this week Human Rights Watch urged the Kenyan government to stop an alleged shoot-to-kill policy against political protesters.
The former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, had been scheduled to travel to Nairobi last night to encourage mediation between Odinga and Kibaki. But he stayed away due to "severe flu". On Monday a key ministerial ally of Kibaki said that Annan had not been invited.