Kisumu, Kenya ? Thousands of machete-wielding youths hunted down members of President Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe Monday in western Kenya’s Rift Valley, torching homes and buses, clashing with police, and blocking roads with burning tires.

Witnesses described seeing two people pulled from cars and stoned to death, while another was burned alive in a minibus – the latest victims of a month of escalating violence triggered by a disputed presidential election. The death toll has soared over 800.

Kibaki has said he is open to direct talks with opposition leader Raila Odinga, who is from the Luo tribe, but that his position as president is not negotiable. Odinga says Kibaki must step down and only new elections will bring peace.

“The road is covered in blood. It’s chaos. Luos are hunting Kikuyus for revenge,” said Baraka Karama, a journalist for independent Kenya Television.

There was no sign of relief from international mediators trying to persuade politicians to resolve the crisis that has erupted over Kibaki’s re-election in Dec. 27 balloting that international and local observers say was marred by a rigged vote tally.

Columns of smoke rose from burning homes in Kisumu, according to journalists who flew into the town.

“We wish to find one, a Kikuyu. … We will butcher them like a cow,” said David Babgy, 24, who was among 50 young men stopping buses at a roadblock of burned cars and uprooted lamp posts.

But the only deaths reported there Monday, apart from the burned bus driver, were people shot by police whom human rights groups accuse of using excessive force.

In Nakuru, provincial capital of the Rift Valley, 64 bodies were counted Monday at the morgue, said a worker who asked that his name not be used.

At least 22 people were killed in Naivasha over the weekend, said district commissioner Katee Mwanza. Nineteen of them were Luos whom a gang of Kikuyus chased through a slum and trapped in a shanty that they set on fire, said police commander Grace Kakai.

In villages around Eldoret, another western town, gangs of young Kalenjin killed four Kikuyus with machetes and stoned to death two others they had pulled from cars, according to witnesses. A military helicopter tried to land at the village of Cheptiret but was prevented by youths who set grasslands ablaze.