Hundreds Flee Kenya Land Clashes; 13 Dead
By REUTERS
Published: January 23, 2005
Filed at 9:48 a.m. ET
MAI MAHIU, Kenya (Reuters) - Hundreds of Kenyans fled their homes Sunday after 13 people were speared or stabbed to death northwest of Nairobi in tribal clashes over access to water, residents and officials said.
Four were killed when they were pulled from vehicles at impromptu checkpoints set up by rival Kikuyu and Maasai groups which attacked anyone from the ``wrong'' tribe on the main road from Nairobi to the Maasai Mara safari park.
Saturday's violence was the latest in a series of clashes between members of various communities over land, an explosive issue President Mwai Kibaki's government says it will address.
National police spokesman Jaspher Ombati said the bloodshed killed 13 people in the Mai Mahiu area in the shadow of Mount Longonot volcano.
Maasai elders said their warriors intended to take revenge for those Maasais killed -- believed to be at least six -- by evicting as many Kikuyus from the area as possible.
Dozens of Maasai and Kikuyu fighters faced each other across the main road to the Maasai Mara in the late afternoon. The Kikuyus carried machetes, the Maasais were armed with spears, bows and arrows and metal-studded fighting sticks.
``You killed our people in our own land. We are going to evict you,'' sand the young red-robed Maasai warriors.
FARM INVASION
The fighting centers on disputes over access to water in the area, traditionally roamed by nomadic Maasai cattle herders but settled since the 1970s by small-scale farmers from the Kikuyu tribe.
``I used to be a wealthy man but all my wealth was reduced to ashes,'' said Johnston Kimujino, a Maasai in his mid 40s who said his thatched home had been burned down in the violence.
``I have nowhere to go. I appeal to the government to assist me,'' Kimujino, clad in traditional red robes, said at a center for the displaced where he had brought his 10 children and four wives.
Local councillor Kimujino Naisheki complained of inadequate policing after dusk when many attacks happen, saying the government had abandoned its people. ``These clashes displaced our people and made them refugees in their own land,'' he said.
The Maasai say the land and use of its rivers were wrongfully taken by the government in the 1970s and given to Kikuyus, including top Kikuyu politicians, by then President Jomo Kenyatta, himself a Kikuyu.
Saturday's violence began when Maasai youths invaded the farm of a Kikuyu local councillor who they accused of diverting the waters of the Ewaso Kedong river to irrigate his crops, causing a shortage of water downstream for their beasts.
Maasais said the invasion was revenge for the killing by Kikuyu farmers of 50 Maasai-owned goats at a water point.
Last week 2,000 people were made homeless in fighting between Maasais and Kipsigis tribesmen at Emarti on the edge of the Maasai Mara.
In August, Maasais invaded some farms in Laikipia district north of Nairobi to urge the return of land reserved for Europeans under early 20th century accords between Britain and Maasai elders. The land concerned is now mostly held by Kenyan small-scale farmers.
An official inquiry last year reported that top politicians had illegally grabbed land for political patronage for decades, but the full extent of the abuse may never be known. |
