By Tim Cocks

KIAMBAA, Kenya, Jan 8 (Reuters) - A week after a mob torched a church and killed 30 people in the worst single attack of Kenya's post-election violence, families are still finding mutilated bodies of loved ones in nearby fields.

Faith Wairimu broke down into sobs as she stumbled across her husband's dismembered body in a field late on Monday after days searching for him. His head and torso were missing.

"It's him, he's dead," the farmer said, pressing her fist against her lips and closing her eyes to stop more tears streaming out.

"I recognise those were his trousers," she said.

Two police officers lifted the hacked-off legs and abdomen into a sack and loaded it on to their pickup truck.

"God help us," muttered one officer, shaking his head.

A gang went on the rampage in the Rift Valley's Kiambaa village on Jan. 1, attacking members of the Kikuyu tribe of President Mwai Kibaki, the declared winner of a Dec. 27 election the opposition says was rigged.

The mob shut dozens of people in a church where they had taken refuge, blocked the doorway with a mattress and set the church on fire, residents said.

Around 30 people were burned to death, while the attackers chased others in the surrounding fields, hacking them with machetes.

"I can't believe they did this to him," wept Wairimu as she looked at her husband's remains.

Her mother was killed by a poisoned arrow fired by one of the mob, Wairimu said, but she had held out hope she might find her husband alive -- until now.

"Where's the rest of the body? These things shouldn't happen in Kenya," she said.

HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

The official death toll from over a week of clashes in Kenya is nearly 500, though the opposition says it is twice as high.

Opposition challenger Raila Odinga called off a rally set for Tuesday to allow time for mediation to end the crisis.

Thousands of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe have fled ethnic-based attacks and more than 250,000 people are displaced nationwide.

Many have taken shelter in churches and police stations around Eldoret town, the main city in the fertile Rift Valley about 300 km (190 miles) north of Nairobi, prompting a humanitarian crisis as food and water run short.

Aid agencies are feeding thousands facing hunger.

Though people from many of Kenya's 42 tribes have been killed, Kibaki's tribe in particular has been targeted.

The Kikuyu are resented because of a perceived stranglehold on the economy and political scene, a feeling exacerbated by an electoral win that observers criticised as flawed.

A week after the massacre at the church, pieces of its ashen remains still smouldered in the dry sun. A half-burnt sandal sat next to charred cups. A piece of a child's sweater and a tiny burnt shoe lay next to a heap of mangled bicycles.

"This was my bike," said James Jenna, a 44-year-old farmer.

"I put it here for safe keeping with my daughter. They mostly burned women and children because they were hiding," he said, glancing over the church's collapsed, blackened walls.

His daughter survived the church attack but is still in intensive care in hospital with severe burns, he said.

He was chased by men with machetes but escaped, he said.

"Is there a human being that can burn a church with people in?" he said. "Unless they're mad -- no, even a madman cannot." (Editing by Alistair Thomson and Keith Weir)

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