Three Kenyan policemen have been killed by an angry mob of opposition supporters who accused the Government of trying to rig the knife-edged election that could see the president voted out of power after just one term in office.

The three were among hundreds of policemen deployed in the western Nyanza province to reinforce security ahead of tomorrow’s poll, a tight race between President Mwai Kibaki and his rival Raila Odinga.

Mr Odinga, 62, a flamboyant former political prisoner who is leading opinion polls, charged this week that the police were being used to rig Thursday’s election – a claim rejected by the Government.

Nyanza is a bastion of Mr Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), and witnesses said anti-Kibaki sentiment was running high.

“Tension is very high in the affected districts, but we have deployed enough officers,” Grace Kaindi said. “The public is very furious about the claims of rigging."

The broadcaster KTN and the ODM also claimed today that the Government was disguising police as party agents to carry out fraud at polling stations. KTN ran murky images of some 20 civilian buses taking police out of a Nairobi training college under cover of darkness.

It quoted sources saying the police had been stripped of their usual ID and given letters accrediting them as agents of Mr Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU) to get them access to voting stations.

Meanwhile, an ODM spokeswoman claimed that a suspect believed to have stuffed ballot boxes with pre-marked papers was arrested in the western town of Eldoret in Rift Valley province.

“We are also getting information from the public that the government is trying to recruit people for rigging, but people cannot come out in the open because of fear of reprisals,” she said.

Samuel Kivuitu, the Electoral Commission of Kenya chairman, said his panel has put in place elaborate measures to avoid vote-rigging, which was widespread during the country’s three other multi-party elections.

Final opinion polls released last week gave Mr Odinga 43 to 45 per cent, ahead of Mr Kibaki’s 36.7 to 43 per cent. Only a survey conducted by Gallup showed Mr Kibaki on top, with 44 per cent to Odinga’s 43 per cent.

Polls indicate that Mr Odinga’s charisma has gained him support beyond his tribal constituency. But he has joined seven political parties in 15 years, leading to charges of being a populist and an opportunist.

Escalating tribal rhetoric has prompted fears of communal unrest in Kenya, which has been more stable than its neighbours since its 1963 independence from Britain but has a history of electoral violence.

Kenya’s leading rights group says that at least 70 people have died in poll-related violence since the campaign started, but few incidents have been reported in recent days and candidates have appealed for calm.

Tribal violence has displaced tens of thousands in the western Rift Valley, a province with the largest number of voters and home to a mosaic of feuding communities. The electoral board has organised voting in mobile booths there.

Police said they had beefed up security in 27,000 polling stations across the country that will be manned by around 15,000 electoral observers, including some from the European Union and the Commonwealth.

Kenyans will also choose 210 members of parliament and more than 2,000 local councillors tomorrow, with some observers predicting that increasingly demanding electors could vote out up to 70 percent of sitting MPs.

Some 14 million voters are eligible to cast their ballots.

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