A 已损坏 election in Kenya just took a bloody turn for the 更坏:

A mob torched a church where hundreds had sought refuge Tuesday, and witnesses said dozens of people — including children — were burned alive or hacked to death with machetes in ethnic violence that followed Kenya’s disputed election.

The killing of up to 50 ethnic Kikuyus in the Rift Valley city of Eldoret brought the death toll from four days of rioting to more than 275, raising fears of further unrest in what has been one of Africa’s most stable democracies.

The latest violence recalled scenes from the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when more than a half-million people were killed. The question facing Kenya is whether the politicians will lose control of the mobs, triggering a civil war.

President Mwai Kibaki, who was swiftly inaugurated for a second term Sunday after a vote that critics said was rigged, called for a meeting with his political opponents — a significant softening of tone for a man who rarely speaks to the press and who vowed to crack down on rioters.

But opposition candidate Raila Odinga refused, saying he would meet Kibaki only “if he announces that he was not elected.” Odinga accused the government of stoking the chaos, telling The Associated Press in an interview that Kibaki’s administration “is guilty, directly, of genocide.”

Meanwhile, more details of the murder of US diplomat John Granville in Sudan have emerged:

A US diplomat and his driver were shot dead in a possible terror attack in Sudan yesterday while returning home from a new year party at the British Embassy in Khartoum.

John Michael Granville, 33, who worked for the US Agency for International Development, reportedly left the party and dropped off another person before being shot five times at close range at about 4am as he returned to his home near the UN compound in Khartoum.

Mr Granville underwent surgery but died several hours later. Abdel Rahman Abbas, 40, his Sudanese driver, died immediately.

The shooting resembled the murder of Laurence Foley, a US aid official shot outside his home in Amman, the Jordanian capital, in 2002. A military court in Jordan imposed the death penalty on eight Islamic militants linked to al-Qaeda – six of them in absentia… the shootings came a day after the UN took over command of the African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. On Monday President Bush signed a law making it easier for US investment managers to divest from Sudan. Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, has called for militants to attack UN peacekeepers in Sudan.

Granville had 忠诚 his short life to Africa:

Africa had been “very special to John” since his time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, his family said in a statement Tuesday, after Granville, 33, and his driver were shot to death in the Sudanese capital.

Granville, who was from Buffalo, was working for the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of a team trying to implement a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of civil war between north and south Sudan.

“He told his mom several times … that it’s dangerous, what he’s doing, but he wouldn’t want to be doing anything else,” said U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins, who spoke with Granville’s mother, Jane Granville, after her son’s death.

Officials were working to return Granville’s body to the United States, possibly by Wednesday or Thursday, the Buffalo-area congressman said.

Granville, who last called his mother on New Year’s Eve, graduated from Fordham University and got a master’s degree in international development from Clark University, his family said. While in the Peace Corps, he helped a Cameroon village build its first school.

“John’s life was a celebration of love, hope and peace,” the family’s statement said. “He will be missed by many people throughout the world whose lives were touched and made better because of his care.”

纽约太阳报 calls on Congress and the president to act on the cases of other murdered American diplomats.