First, the attackers pelted the church with rocks to pin down the women, children, and elderly people seeking shelter inside.

The armed men then slammed shut the church doors. They piled bicycles and mattresses outside the main entrance and blocked a smaller door at the back. They went about their business efficiently.

Inside the small Kenya Assemblies of God Church in Kiamaa, just outside the town of Eldoret in western Kenya, dozens of terrified people huddled together. They were Kikuyus, members of the tribe that has borne the brunt of the violence that followed last week's disputed presidential election.

The attackers, members of the rival Kalenjin tribe, poured fuel on the mattresses and piled on dried maize leaves from a nearby field. Then they set the barricades alight and waited until the flames burned high.

The church turned into an oven.

Yesterday, the day after the attack, witnesses and survivors came to collect their families' belongings from the church yard. In muted voices, they told their stories, reliving their horror.

There was so much screaming, said Samuel Mwangi, 34, who rushed to the church Tuesday to try to defend those trapped inside, that he could not distinguish the cries of the dying Kikuyu women and children from the clamor of Kalenjin women who came with the attackers to watch the slaughter.

President Mwai Kibaki's electoral victory, seen by the opposition as fraudulent, triggered days of ugly tribal violence from western Kenya to the coast. Mobs of opposition supporters have attacked Kibaki's fellow Kikuyu, burned houses, looted shops, hacked people's heads off, or slashed them with machetes.

The number of dead at the Kiamaa church was still unclear yesterday. Many bodies were burned to ashes, according to a witness with the Red Cross, which recovered 17 corpses during the day but estimated that 35 people had died.

Yesterday, the site was one of silent desolation. An acrid smell of ashes filled the air. Charred machetes, cooking pots, and handbags were scattered on the ground beside children's shoes.

Inside the church was a fragment from a Bible page, burned around the edges.
Before the attack, as rumors tore through the district that Kalenjins were burning Kikuyus' houses, the people of this small community reasoned that churches had often served as refuges in times of tribal tension.

But Kenya's violence in recent days, which has left at least 275 people dead, has crossed an invisible line. For the first time, Kenyan newspapers are raising the example of Rwanda, where about 800,000 people died in tribal killings in 1994.

The current atrocities, dubbed by the government as "ethnic cleansing" of the dominant Kikuyus, are deeply shocking to Kenyans. "We didn't think that they could burn them in the church. It is a terrible thing. I've never heard of that thing before," said Mwangi. "They did something which we can't imagine."