( dpa ) - More than a quarter of a million people have been forced to leave their homes in Kenya in the past three months, 100,000 of them following post-election violence since New Year, the UN said Tuesday quoting official sources.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the security situation remained tense with people still on the move particularly in and around the flashpoints of Eldoret and Kericho in the east of the country.
Up to 3,000 Kenyans are said to have crossed into neighbouring Uganda in the past few days.
Police claim as many as 500 people have died following the disputed re-election of President Mwai Kibaki on December 27. The opposition leader Raila Odinga has refused to accept the result claiming electoral fraud.
The International Organisation for Migration said along with the Kenya Red Cross it was preparing a temporary camp at Eldoret to shelter between 10,000 and 30,000 internally displaced people.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR, which already provides assistance to 270,000 refugees who have fled to Kenya from elsewhere in Africa, said it had sent an emergency team to help deal with this new crisis.
The Geneva-based UN humanitarian agencies said Kenya was a major hub for relief operations throughout the eastern Horn of Africa including southern Sudan, northern Uganda and Somalia. Stability and calm in Kenya were vital to their operations in the region, they said.