NAIROBI, 1 January 2008 — Kenyan police yesterday battled thousands of opposition supporters enraged over President Mwai Kibaki’s allegedly fraudulent re-election, firing tear gas and live ammunition as the death toll from the violence rose to 185, officials and witnesses said.

Three police officers said they had orders to shoot to kill, while opposition supporters said they would risk death to protest what they called a stolen election. Echoing statements by the European Union, the United States said it was concerned over “serious problems” during the counting of votes.

The vote also ignited smoldering resentment between Kenya’s two largest tribes, with supporters of Raila Odinga, a Luo who officially came in second, clashing with members of Kibaki’s Kikuyu. The head of Kenya’s Red Cross said many of the dead were killed in ethnic violence across the country.

In Nairobi’s burning slums, demonstrators were beaten back with tear gas and water cannons, and police fired live rounds over their heads.

Alex Busisa, 22, said police shot him and a friend after he walked out of his home near a demonstration. He spoke from a hospital bed after an operation for a gunshot wound to the stomach. While politicians “could afford a plane to fly away... it is the man on the ground who suffers, like me,” Busisa said.

Odinga compared Kibaki to a military dictator who “seized power through the barrel of the gun,” and postponed a rally planned for yesterday after police warned the opposition not to hold it. Odinga instead called on 1 million people to gather Thursday in Nairobi’s Uhuru Park, where protesters had demanded multiparty democracy in the early 1990s. “We will inform police of the march. We will march wearing black arm bands because we are mourning,” said Odinga, a fiery figure who had been leading early results and public opinion polls.

Kibaki vowed to step up security across the country to “deal decisively with those who breach the peace.”

Early yesterday, opposition supporters blocked a road into Nairobi’s city center with burning refuse and tried to set a gas station alight, and thousands struggling to break out of the slums surged back and forth under clouds of tear gas and baton charges all day.

Within Kibera, riot police fired shots into the air and tear gas into homes and businesses.

Panicked residents called journalists to report ethnic gangs were roaming the narrow, sewage-filled alleyways of Kibera, seeking to avenge members of their tribe killed in overnight violence and setting homes on fire.

Bewildered tourists, who contribute to a $800 million a year industry that is Kenya’s top earner, were stranded by delayed flights at Mombasa airport on the Indian Ocean coast.