GENEVA, Jan 4 (Reuters) - About 100,000 displaced people in Kenya's Northern Rift Valley could face starvation after the eruption of post-election violence, a U.N. agency said on Friday and the International Red Cross made an urgent appeal for aid.

The U.N. World Food Programme said its workers were on the way to give out food through the International Committee of the Red Cross, which appealed for 15 million Swiss francs ($13.5 million) to buy food and relief supplies for a month.

"About 100,000 displaced people are threatened with starvation in the Northern Rift valley and need food aid," the U.N. agency said in a statement from its Berlin office.

Protests and ethnic violence in Kenya following the re-election of President Mwai Kibaki in a disputed poll have killed more than 300 people in the last week. The Red Cross said it was ready to step up its work if the situation got worse.

"The level of hatred is very high. Violence of tribal origin is the worst -- it knows no limits and is extremely difficult to quell," Alexandre Liebeskind, deputy head of ICRC operations for the Horn of Africa, told Swiss television on Thursday night.

About 30 members of Kibaki's Kikuyu community died on Tuesday when a mob torched a church in the Rift Valley.

The World Food Programme said its biggest problem was getting food lorries to western Kenya. About 15 trucks were stuck in Nairobi, a further 60 in other cities. Each had about 34 tonnes of food. Aid flights had been cancelled, it said.

"Practically all WFP transport in Kenya -- whether it is heading to western Kenya or Uganda or Sudan -- has ground to a halt in the last few days due to the security situation," it said.

The Swiss-based ICRC said its priority was medical assistance to victims of violence.

Pascal Cuttat, head of the ICRC's delegation in Nairobi, said that most of the displaced had fled with few possessions and had lost their homes, crops or livestock.

"They literally ran to save their lives," he said in a statement posted on the ICRC Web site www.icrc.org. ($1=1.110 Swiss Franc) (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Madeline Chambers in Berlin, editing by Matthew Tostevin) (For more information on humanitarian crises and issues visit www.alertnet.org)

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