EFFORT TO HALT KENYAN SLUM BATTLE !

Hundreds of residents have fled the slum. Hundreds of Kenyan riot police are patrolling one of Nairobi's larger slums to keep the peace after five days of bitter clashes between rival gangs. At least eight people have been killed but residents say the death toll is higher. Thousands of people have fled their homes in Mathare slum. Many of the flimsy houses in a valley in the north-east of the capital have been burnt to the ground. Half of Nairobi's 3.5m inhabitants live in slums where policing is low key. A dusk-to-dawn curfew has been imposed on the area.

"My house was burnt. I had to flee for safety. I do not know where two of my children are," exhausted Mathare resident Fatima told Reuters news agency. Skirmishes between the outlawed Mungiki and Taliban gangs started on Sunday. "We have deployed enough officers in the area to maintain the peace," Nairobi police commander Kingori Mwangi told AFP news agency.

Police spokesman Gideon Kubunja warned politicians not to inflame the situation, after some members of parliament accused the Kenyan government of encouraging the gangs. A government spoksman said it would deal with the gangs"without mercy within the context of law and order". On Wednesday, police were reported to have shot two people as they attempted to contain the battles that erupted over protection money the gangs levied on brewers of an illegal drink. Many Mathare residents have camped outside Nairobi's military air base and people continue to leave the area.

Kenyan television showed gangs of youth torching vehicles and shouting, "Kill, Kill." The BBC's Gray Phombeah in Nairobi says the banned Mungiki sect is inspired by the bloody Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s against the British colonial rule. Thousands of young and poor Kenyans - mostly drawn from Kenya's largest tribe, the Kikuyu - have flocked to the sect whose doctrines are based on traditional practices.

According to Reuters news agency, police arrested their leader over killings and running extortion rackets among transport operators. The Taliban were formed in Kenya's western city of Kisumu in the 1990s and are reputed to organise political violence but have no religious affiliation, unlike the Afghan Islamic fundamentalist group from which they took their name, AFP news agency reports.

The clashes come at an embarrassing time for Nairobi, as a total of about 6,000 delegates are attending the United Nations' two-week conference on climate change.

BBC NEWS REPORT.