Ethnic clashes claim lives of 48 in southeast Kenya

NAIROBI - Agence France-Presse

At least 48 Kenyans were hacked or burnt to death in ethnic clashes between two rival groups, the worst single attack since deadly post-election violence four years ago, police said yesterday.

“It is a very bad incident.... They include 31 women, 11 children and six men,” regional deputy police chief Joseph Kitur said of the attack, which took place late Aug. 21 between the Pokomo and Orma peoples in the rural Tana River district.

 Kitur said “34 were hacked to death and 14 others were burnt to death,” while several huts were torched after a gang of men launched the attack, the latest in a long history of bitter clashes between the rival groups in the remote area of Kenya. It was not clear what sparked the attack, but the two communities have clashed before over the use of land and water resources, although the scale and intensity of the killings shocked police.

Two German tourists killed
The attack happened in the Reketa area of Tarassa in Kenya’s south-east, close to the coast and some 300 kilometers from the Kenyan capital Nairobi. In 2001, at least 130 people were killed in a string of clashes in the same district and between the same two communities about access to land and a river.

In another incident, two German tourists and two pilots were killed when their airplane crashed yesterday in Kenya’s renowned Maasai Mara national park, with at least three other tourists badly injured, police said.