KOGUTA/KISUMU, Kenya (REUTERS) - The body of a man was found in a sugarcane field in western Kenya on Sunday (Oct 29), a day after high-level officials visited the area aiming to calm ethnic tensions inflamed by this week's presidential election.

The Luo community largely boycotted Thursday's (Oct 26) election, which was supposed to pit opposition leader Raila Odinga, a Luo, against President Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kikuyu with a Kalenjin deputy president.

The Supreme Court ordered a repeat of the vote after it nullified Kenyatta's win in an August election on procedural grounds.

The motive for the killing of 64-year-old George Odumbe and the identity of its perpetrators were unclear. It came a day after villagers from the Luo and Kalenjin communities armed themselves against each other.

The body of Odumbe, a Luo labourer at a sugar company, was found with three arrows in the back and severe head wounds, a Reuters witness in the village of Koguta said. It was found in a field between Koguta and the nearby Kalenjin village of Mau.

Locals warned the death of the Luo man could spark tit-for-tat violence.

"There's a desire for revenge by the Luo community, I'm trying to tell them to stay calm, but they are so bitter and angry," Gordon Onyango, 32, a Luo, said.

"The two sides are both having meetings now and they are both armed."

Reuters was unable to speak with the Kalenjin community in Mau, but saw a group of young men from the village gathered under a tree. Most were armed with bows and arrows.

Odinga withdrew from the re-run election, saying it would not be fair. In his strongholds in the west, an area that has long felt excluded from political and economic power, protesters prevented polling stations from opening in four counties.

LOW TURNOUT

Across Kenya, 10 percent of polling stations were unable to open, although there were no problems in Kenyatta's areas. Turnout dropped to 43 percent from 80 percent in August, the election commission said.

In some parts of the country, such as Koguta in Kisumu county, protests damaged relations with other communities who wanted to vote for Kenyatta.

That anger risks igniting ethnic violence, which killed around 1,200 people after a disputed 2007 presidential vote, but which has been largely absent from this election.

At least 51 people have been killed in political violence since August, but most deaths have occurred in clashes between protesters and police.

Police, although stationed only 400 metres from where the body was discovered, declined to visit the scene for several hours until reinforcements arrived.

Police did not answer calls from Reuters. But Julius Genga, a county legislator, said by phone while he was driving to the scene: "We want the police to be deployed to try to restore calm because after the death of this man, tension is boiling up and we don't want it to escalate it to unmanageable levels." Kericho county governor Paul Chepkwony told Reuters that he hoped the death would be "an isolated one".

Not all recent attacks were ethnically based.

On Friday, police shot dead a man who was part of a group that stormed the home of former lawmaker James Rege, who had defected to the ruling party from Odinga's movement three years into his term, Homa Bay police commander Marius Tum told Reuters on Sunday.

Both Rege and his attackers were Luo, Tum said, and police were investigating whether other lawmakers had organised the attack.