Kenya was convulsed by weeks of ethnic bloodshed after President Mwai Kibaki's disputed re-election at the end of 2007.

A delay in the announcement of election results fuelled anger that escalated into ethnically-tinged clashes when Kenya's election commission declared Kibaki the winner of the December 2007 presidential poll.

The violence largely pitted supporters of opposition candidate Raila Odinga, who belongs to the ethnic Luo group, against Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe.

More than 1,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands fled their homes, some crossing into Uganda, according to the Kenyan Red Cross.

Outbreaks of violence along ethnic lines uprooted large numbers of people in Kenya over the past 15 years.

Kenya's transition to multiparty politics in the 1990s saw an upsurge of clashes and displacement, and violence spiked in the election years of 1992, 1997 and 2002.

The clashes have been blamed on unresolved issues of land and property, going back to the colonial period. Deep grievances over land distribution have been repeatedly exploited by politicians to garner support and votes from their ethnic groups.