Man killed over water

2005-01-31 10:55

Nairobi - Scores of people fled their homes in Kenya's central Rift Valley at the weekend after a new surge in violence between the Maasai and Kikuyu tribes over water rights, police said on Monday.

Dozens of families fled their homes in the Rift Valley district of Narok after Maasai warriors armed with crude weapons attacked Kikuyu tribesmen, killing one and wounding several others, on Sunday, police said.

"Maasai thugs killed one person, but I have reinforced security along Mai Mahiu-Narok border," Narok police Commander Joshua Leyum told AFP.

The killing brought the death toll from two weeks of clashes to 18 and marked a return to violence that had abated somewhat since Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki vowed last week to crack down on the attacks.

The slain Kikuyu was hacked to death with a machete by enraged Maasai who had just attended the burial of a compatriot killed earlier in January when the clashes began in the Rift Valley's Mai Mahiu region about 60km northwest of Nairobi, police said.

Fearing revenge attacks

Police said dozens of Maasai families were fleeing the Nairegi Enkarein area of Narok fearing Kikuyu revenge attacks after Sunday's violence.

The clashes erupted on January 21 when Maasai herders invaded a farm owned by a Kikuyu local leader, who they said had diverted waters of the Ewaso Kedong River to irrigate his crops, causing a shortage downstream for their animals.

At least 17 people were killed and thousands displaced by subsequent attacks and counter-attacks, but police managed to maintain stability.

The Maasai and Kikuyu communities have been at loggerheads over access to water and pasture since the 1960s, ostensibly after Kenyan founding president Jomo Kenyatta allocated Kikuyus on vast swathes of land that was Maasai grazing zone.

- AFP