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Kisumu (Kenya) (AFP)

Some barricades were made of boulders, others were thrown together with concrete blocks, burning tyres or electrical cables, creating gridlock in Kisumu, Kenya's third city, where furious protesters sought to block Thursday's presidential re-run.

"We do not want the ballot boxes and ballot papers to go to the polling stations," said George Musundu, 24, who was manning one of the barricades not far from the airport.

"Give us some money and we'll let you pass," growled another at a barricade in the east of the city, a beret perched on his head.

With tempers at boiling point in this fractious western city, a bastion of support for opposition leader Raila Odinga who boycotted Thursday's vote, police and demonstrators faced off in a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

As protesters torched barricades and hurled stones, police responded with tear gas, water cannon and real bullets in an increasingly-tense standoff which left two people dead and more than 30 people wounded, most of them by live bullets, the city's governor said.

It was only when the heavens opened that tempers finally began to cool before the onset of nightfall.

It was a day that had started relatively calmly for this city with a population of around 500,000 that lies on the northern banks of Lake Victoria.

- 'This is crazy!' -

When the polls opened at 6:00 am, all of the 196 polling stations in the Kisumu-Centre constituency were deserted, with local officials too afraid to deliver of voting slips, ballot boxes and electronic kits to the relevant centres for fear of being attacked after a week in which some of their number had been assaulted.

On the eve of the ballot, Odinga had urged his followers to stay at home, certain that the IEBC election board would not be able to pull off a second vote which was hastily organised in just under two months after the Supreme Court overturned the results of August's initial poll.

Overnight Wednesday, the front gate of a primary school which had been slated for use as a polling station in eastern Kisumu was welded shut on the inside with three iron bars, an AFP correspondent said.

"Just to be sure," explained a passer by, a smile on his face.

In Kondele slum however, which has seen many violent demonstrations in recent weeks, the situation was surprisingly calm, with police fired off the odd bout of tear gas at small groups of demonstrators.

But the morning calm in Kisumu quickly deteriorated and by the afternoon, ambulances could be seen screeching up to the emergency department at the city's Jaramogi hospital, their tyres screaming as they pulled up to unload the wounded.

Medics said they had treated at least 11 people who had been injured by bullets, with a teenager later dying of massive blood loss after being hit in the upper thigh.

But it was a toll that would mount.

"This is crazy! We are demonstrating and they shoot us, what kind of country is this?" asked Samuel Okot, 20, who arrived at the hospital with his friend Joseph Ouma who had been shot in the knee and was howling in pain.

- 'In mourning' -

Others were in worse shape. Felix Omondi, 19, was barely conscious when he was brought in on a stretcher with thick bandages around his neck.

And Benson Odhiambo, 20, arrived with his ear torn off, with doctors fearful a bullet was lodged in his skull.

And then there was Duncan Baraza who was nursing a broken arm and said he had been badly beaten up by police who forced their way into his home, even though he claimed not to have taken part in any demonstrations.

Four others with lesser injuries told a similar story.

Speaking to journalists at the hospital, Kisumu governor Anyang Nyongo, who is close to Odinga, didn't mince his words.

"Our people must be protected from police brutality," he said, denouncing them as more of a "militia" than a police force.

"People have the right to resist an oppressive regime... and when they resist, they should not kill us," he thundered before declaring a week of mourning.

And he also rejected plans by the election committee to postpone until Saturday the ballot in Kisumu and three other protest-hit counties in the west.

"We are not going to vote when we are in mourning."

As Odinga said on the eve of the vote, his opposition movement was changing -- and now it would all be about "resistance".

© 2017 AFP