Kenyan officials backed by armed police are forcing thousands of Kenyans displaced by postelection violence to leave a refugee camp, a resident and an international aid worker said Wednesday.

The head of Doctors Without Borders, Remi Carrier, said local officials accompanied by armed police officers were going from tent to tent Wednesday in a camp housing 9,000 people in the western town of Kitale, and ordering people to leave in a matter of hours.

“The police have removed my tent ... put it in the road,” said 42-year-old farmer Ronald Barasa.

Barasa said officials would not listen when he explained that he, his pregnant wife and five young children had nowhere to go. They were squatters on a farm and fear attack if they return, he said. The family left after seeing a neighbor’s young son shot dead in front of them.

“They say we must leave this camp,” Barasa said. “They say they don’t want to see anybody because Kibaki says we must go home,” he said.

The reference was to Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki. Government spokesman Alfred Mutua did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The government began encouraging people last week to leave camps, offering them transport and food, but officials said the exercise was voluntary.

Barasa said his wife was at first reluctant to leave. But she changed her mind when she saw a district official beat another woman to the ground with a log when she questioned the order. The woman curled up in the mud as the official rained blows on her for nearly five minutes, said Carrier, the head of Doctors Without Borders.

Barasa said that, after the beating, which was witnessed by hundreds of people in the camp, the woman was hauled away by police.

Carrier said many of the camp’s inhabitants have nowhere to go, and even those recuperating from surgery are being told they must leave.

Thousands of houses and businesses were torched and about 600,000 people were forced from their homes in violence following Kenya’s disputed Dec. 27 elections. Clashes took an ethnic turn, and tribes with long-held land and political grievances began attacking each other.

After months of peace talks, Kibaki and former opposition leader Raila Odinga formed a unity government last month.

The government is anxious for displaced farmers to return home and plant crops during the rainy season, which already has started. Kenya faces a severe shortfall of the staple corn, just as world prices are skyrocketing, because many farmers’ homes and fields were burnt in the violence.

Last week the government launched an operation to help the displaced get home. But many interviewed by The Associated Press said they fear more attacks if they return. Others who left camps swiftly have returned, saying they found inadequate food, shelter and security.

At the Kitale camp, Carrier said many people were considering fleeing to neighboring Uganda.

“They are saying if we can’t be displaced in our own country, we will be refugees in Uganda,” he said.

More than 2,400 Kenyan refugees are living at a camp in northwestern Uganda and countless others are staying with friends or relatives there. Given a choice last week to move to a permanent refugee camp or return home, only 323 chose to return to Kenya.

Stephen Ndichu, a father of three, said he would never go back, because a mob had attacked him with machetes and left him for dead.

“I can never go back after what I’ve experienced. I saw someone skinned alive. There is too much hate,” he said. “These politicians have reached agreement before but it didn’t last. Why will it last this time?”

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Associated Press Writer Katy Pownall contributed to this report from Mulanda, Uganda.