The head of the African Union was traveling to Kenya on Wednesday for crisis talks to end an explosion of post-election violence that has killed more than 300 people, including dozens burned alive as they sought refuge in a church.

The killing of up to 50 ethnic Kikuyus on Tuesday as they sheltered in a church in the Rift Valley city of Eldoret recalled scenes from the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when more than a half-million people were killed.

The question facing Kenya is whether the politicians will lose control of the mobs, triggering a civil war.

President Mwai Kibaki, who was swiftly inaugurated for a second term on Sunday after a vote that critics said was rigged, called for a meeting with his political opponents — a significant softening of tone for a man who vowed to crack down on rioters.

But opposition candidate Raila Odinga refused, saying he would meet Kibaki only “if he announces that he was not elected”. Odinga accused the government of stoking the chaos, telling The Associated Press in an interview that Kibaki’s administration “is guilty, directly, of genocide”.

Meanwhile, the head of the country’s electoral commission, Samuel Kivuitu, said he had been pressured by both sides to announce the results quickly—and perhaps wrongly. The country’s oldest newspaper, The Standard, on Wednesday quoted Kivuitu as saying, “I do not know whether Kibaki won the election.”

The head of the African Union, Ghanaian president John Kufuor, arrived in Nairobi on Wednesday to help mediate the post-election violence, said the AU’s spokeswoman Habiba Mejri-Cheikh. She declined to offer further details.

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