Nine of the raiders were also killed in what appeared to have been a revenge attack by settled Pokomo farmers against the semi-nomadic Orma pastoralists after a series of clashes in August in which more than 100 people were killed.

The two groups have fought for years over access to grazing, farmland and water, but human rights groups have blamed the latest violence on politicians seeking to drive away parts of the local population they believe will vote for their rivals in presidential and parliamentary elections in March.

If those charges are true, it further raises fears of a repeat of the ethnic violence that rocked Kenya after the disputed 2007 presidential election, in which more than 1,200 people were killed countrywide and many more thousands driven from their homes.

"About 150 Pokomo raiders attacked Kipao village which is inhabited by the Ormas early on Friday. The Ormas appeared to have been aware and were prepared," Robert Kitur, Coast Region deputy police chief, told reporters.

One survivor said the attackers stuck at dawn.

"There were too many gunshots. They used also spears and machetes. I ran out of my house and left behind my wife and two children, and told them not to leave… but the enemies reached my house, killed my family and burnt my house as I watched from where I was hiding," said Osman Amran, 63, of the Orma tribe, who lay on a hospital bed with deep cut wounds on both thighs.

President Mwai Kibaki instructed security forces to prevent further deaths. Kibaki imposed a curfew in September and sent extra security forces to the area to try to end the violence, intensified by an influx of weapons in the last few years.

"Burns, bullet wounds"

Police sent an additional team of 200 paramilitary officers to the region to quell the fighting.

Police had already been deployed to the area in September after the attacks in August. It was unclear how the latest violence erupted while officers were on the ground, something which also baffling to the police.

"We are still trying to establish how these attacks escaped the knowledge of the officers on the ground. The officers responded after most of the damage had been done," Kitur said.

Police said six women and 13 children were among the dead and nine of the attackers were killed. Many bled to death from wounds inflicted with machetes. The village was deserted as the survivors fled for fear of further attacks.

Kenya Red Cross, which has a team on the ground treating the wounded, put the death toll at 32, including several children, with about 45 houses set on fire. Red Cross photographs posted on Twitter showed the injured being treated for serious cuts to the arms and head. One person had lost an arm.

"We have been administering first aid services to many with cuts, some very deep on various body parts especially the head and back. Others have burns and bullet wounds," said Mwanaisha Hamisi, the Coast regional Red Cross coordinator.

"It is almost overwhelming but we have mobilized our people from other areas of the province."

Prolonged trouble at the coast would cause jitters among some tourists and may affect Kenya’s vital tourism industry, already damaged by the kidnappings of Western tourists from beach resorts by Somali gunmen and grenade attacks in the port city of Mombasa, at the height of the tourist season.

Dams along the Tana River, Kenya’s longest, supply about two-thirds of the east African state’s electricity, but the fighting has so far not threatened electricity generation.

— Joseph Akwiri writes for Reuters from Mombasa, Kenya.

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In an attempt to stem the bloodshed, President Mwai Kibaki introduced a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Tana River County where the attacks occurred and ordered the deployment of additional security personnel to the area.

"The government has… directed the declaration and maintenance of a dusk-to-dawn curfew among other measures… In the meantime, additional detachments of security forces have been sent to the area with immediate effect," Kibaki’s office said in a statement.

"The killings of innocent women, children, men and security officials is a heinous crime and the perpetrators must be punished accordingly for their outright disregard for the sanctity of human life and property."

It was unclear how long the curfew would remain in place.

More than 100 people have been shot, hacked and burned to death in the last three weeks as the Pokomo and Orma tribes have fought one another in a deadly dispute over Orma-owned cattle grazing on land the Pokomo say is theirs.

Security forces were trying to disarm both tribes on Monday evening and Samuel Kilele, the provincial commissioner in Coast province, said police had arrested 15 people over attacks last week.

Earlier in the day, Kilele called for the military to be sent to the Tana Delta area as the police struggled to end the killing.

The land clashes and deadly riots in the port city of Mombasa following the killing of a radical Muslim preacher last month have stoked fears of more unrest along the coast ahead of a presidential election next March.

"We will soon recommend to the government to send military officers down there to help us restore order," Kilele said.

Jillo Dabacha, who chairs a community security group in the trouble zone, said about 300 attackers armed with spears, bows and arrows and guns had surrounded the Orma village and attacked a nearby police camp in a co-ordinated strike.

"They wanted to prevent the police from interfering with their attack on the village," Dabacha told Reuters by telephone.

Settled Pokomo farmers and semi-nomadic Orma pastoralists have clashed intermittently for years over access to grazing, farmland and water. The violence broke out again last month after the Pokomo accused the pastoralists of grazing cattle on their land and massacred more than 50 Orma villagers.

Awash with guns

The Kenyan Red Cross said the death toll from Monday morning’s attack on Kilelengwani village was 38 people, including nine police officers, and that it was considering pulling its local staff out of the Tana Delta.

Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast is a major tourist destination but many Kenyans accuse the government of a decades-long economic and political marginalization of the region, creating deep social divisions.

Zipporah Wamboi, a secondary school teacher in the Tana Delta, said there were often food shortages and very limited access to clean water.

"People drink from the swamps and the crocodile-infested Tana River. The plight of these people has been ignored for years now and something must be done quickly," Wamboi said.

Wamboi also said many in the area were armed.

"Many of us believe that there is a political instigation to this violence. This violence always (reaches) a high crescendo when the political temperatures start to take root," Hassan Omar, a lawyer and former commissioner at the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights, told Reuters.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga visited the area after an earlier attack but government efforts have failed to ease tensions.

Cattle rustling and clashes over grazing and farming land are relatively common between communities in arid areas of east Africa and often escalate into revenge attacks.

An influx of weapons across Kenya’s borders, in particular from war-ravaged Somalia, has made the situation more violent.

— Joseph Akwiri writes for Reuters from Mombasa, Kenya. Additional reporting for Reuters by George Obulutsa in Nairobi and writing by Richard Lough.

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