By Nicolo Gnecchi

NAIROBI, Jan 1 (Reuters) - The wave of post-election violence in Kenya is hurting mainly the poor rather than the politicians who caused it but who are safe inside their gated compounds, an Italian slum priest said. Father Daniel Moschetti has worked for 15 years in Nairobi's Korogocho shanty-town, where he is easily recognisable to the 100,000 residents by his long beard and outgoing manner.

Late on Monday, he spoke to Reuters by phone from his tin-roofed home there, as furious machete-wielding youths stalked the muddy streets outside, hurling rocks and torching shacks and kiosks.

"This is a war of the poor. The slum residents are suffering," he said. "We have no food, no water. We have no communication with the outside world, whilst politicians are creating the conditions for civil war."

Controversial election results gave President Mwai Kibaki a narrow victory on Sunday over his opposition rival Raila Odinga.

The opposition said the outcome had been rigged, and tensions erupted into nationwide clashes pitting Odinga's Luo supporters against members of Kibaki's Kikuyu ethnic group.

About 150 people -- most in slums, and at least 15 of them in Korogocho -- have died.

"The international community must recognise that the situation is getting worse," Moschetti, a member of the Comboni Fathers missionaries, said in the interview.

"The ethnicity which has been politicised during the campaigns is turning to hatred now that Kenyans feel that democracy has failed them."

The Comboni Fathers have built schools and a recycling cooperative, and run rescue centres for street children in Korogocho, which sits in the east of the capital next to Dandora dump, one of Africa's biggest and most toxic rubbish mountains.

The slum has become notorious for violence and as a hotbed of activity by organised gangsters running extortion rackets.

Residents say some of the worst troublemakers are paid by politicians as hired muscle to intimidate their opponents.

"Kenyans have shown a much greater maturity than politicians, but it is the politicians living in their secure compounds who are inciting ethnic hatred," Moschetti said.

"The future of this country is in the hands of people who have no wisdom. They are blinded by pride and cannot see their people dying." (Editing by Daniel Wallis and Catherine Evans)

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