Five Kenyan villagers were shot dead today in what police said was an indiscriminate tribal attack linked to the country's disputed election.

The attack on the western village of Salama in the Rift Valley followed overnight clashes in which five people were hacked to death in the slums of Nairobi. Police said that tribal clashes in the capital's Huruma, Babadogo and Mathare shanty towns had pushed the death toll in the political and tribal conflict to over 50 in the past week.

The fighting and revenge killings have pitted members of pro-government tribes against those supporting Raila Odinga, who claims he was robbed of victory in the elections on December 27.

President Kibaki is a member of the Kikuyu tribe, which has dominated the country’s economic life since the colonial era. The victims of today’s shootings were thought to have been from the Kikuyu clan, who have been targeted by angry opposition supporters since the disputed poll.

Several houses were razed as hundreds stampeded out of shanty towns around Nairobi that are now divided along tribal lines. Three days of opposition protests that began last Wednesday provoked a fierce crackdown by anti-riot and paramilitary police, and some unarmed civilians were shot down in the capital and the western city of Kisumu.

Riot police continued to patrol major towns as well as the volatile rural areas across the country, as opposition supporters remained in defiant mood.

"The struggle is still on until justice prevails," Mr Odinga said in the town of Kakamega, on his first visit to western opposition strongholds since the elections.

"I won the election, but I was rigged out," he added, during a brief visit which took him to see victims of the violence at local hospitals and displaced people sheltered in a Methodist church.

Mr Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party called at the weekend for a fresh round of demonstrations this Thursday, but police have vowed to block them.

Alarmed by the stalemate, the Roman Catholic Church appealed to the feuding leaders to start talks and avert plunging the country, once seen as a haven of stability in a restive region, further into chaos.

"We are making a special appeal to our politicians - it is not by going to the streets that is going to solve the problems," Cardinal John Njue said.

Kofi Annan, the former United Nations chief, is set to arrive in Kenya tomorrow to mediate in the conflict, as is President Museveni of Uganda, who was one of the first heads of state to congratulate Mr Kibaki on his re-election.

The Government has rejected the term "mediation", insisting there is no crisis in the country, but has welcomed African leaders to facilitate dialogue.

The ODM announced last week it would change tactics and launch a boycott of companies owned by Mr Kibaki’s allies.

But the Government, in a statement published today, said that the move was meant "to create poverty and destroy the livelihood of the very poor" and accused the opposition of incitement.

"The targeting of companies and directing of supporters to target and destroy specific companies or persons is a serious crime," the statement added.

The EU’s development commissioner, Louis Michel, met both Mr Odinga and Mr Kibaki on Saturday, albeit separately, and insisted that a solution to the crisis could be found with "a little political will".

The violence that erupted when Mr Kibaki was declared the winner of the presidential election has killed at least 700 people and displaced a quarter of a million.

The disruption to transport services caused by nationwide violence as well as lasting business closures and a dramatic drop in tourism revenue have dealt a blow to East Africa's largest economy.

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