KENYA: Clashes over grazing land and water leave scores dead.

Record ID: 362350

  • Title: KENYA: Clashes over grazing land and water leave scores dead.
  • Date: 22nd August 2012
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF DEAD BODIES WRAPPED IN BLANKETS MORE OF DEAD BODIES
  • Embargoed: 6th September 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Crime,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAAVV7U88ND17F69HKNC1MT3DF0
  • Story Text: Kenya police deployed to ease tension as fear of more attacks in a village where Red Cross counted counted 59 bodies after recent raid.
    Attackers armed with machetes, bows and arrows and spears locked Kenyan villagers in their houses, set the structures alight and killed anyone who tried to escape, leaving at least 48 dead overnight on Tuesday (August 21) police said.
    The raid in Kenya's coastal region was part of a long-running dispute between the area's Pokomo and Orma groups over grazing land and water.
    Kenyan Red Cross officials say they had counted 59 bodies, and the group had ferried more than 40 injured people to a hospital in Malindi town, 150km (93 miles) away from the scene.
    About 300 raiders from the Pokomo attacked Rekete village, inhabited by Ormas, late on Tuesday, according to some of those who were attacked.

    "They started attacking us at about five in the morning and they started burning houses from that direction and also killing cattle, I was in the house then saw them and when some of them entered one of the houses, I run away hid somewhere, they were more than 300 people," said Osman Haji.
    The raid was in retaliation for an attack by Orma youths on Pokomo farmers which killed two people, officers added.
    The long dispute between the two groups erupted after the farmers accused the pastoralists of grazing their cattle in their farms.
    Local residents said more than 120 huts were burnt.

    "The people who attacked us came to our village at about five in the morning, the entire area was surrounded and some of them had weapons that a villager would not have and that is how they killed people, those for those men and women who had run away were surrounded and killed," said unnamed Tana resident.
    Cattle rustling and clashes over grazing and farming land are relatively common between communities in arid areas of east Africa and often escalate into revenge attacks.
    Local administrators said they had held a meeting with leaders from both groups last week which had appeared to resolve the dispute and they were shocked at the latest attacks.
    Security has been beefed up with more personnel deployed to the area.
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