Two die as farm violence flares in east

Two people died on Saturday during a clash on a white-owned farm in eastern Zimbabwe and an elderly farmer was arrested in connection with the violence, farming officials said on Sunday. According to an AFP report, the deaths occurred on Bita Farm in the rural district of Hwedza, 100 km southeast of the capital Harare.

The report said that according to Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) officials, pro-government militants burned the homes of farm employees and the farm's office complex. The officials claimed that both the dead appeared to be among young pro-government militants who were being ferried by truck to different farms around Hwedza, the report added.

It said that security guards on Bita Farm said they saw the two fall out of a truck. They were then run over by another truck. The farm's owner, John Bibby, was arrested and held overnight in connection with the violence, the report added. About 80 of his employees were also questioned in connection with the case. Police could not be reached for comment.

The clash on Bita Farm apparently stemmed from a lingering feud between rival groups of militants who want to carve up farms in the area as part of the government's violence-wracked fast-track land reform programme, farming officials claimed. In early September, the CFU reported that at least 2,500 labourers and their families - an estimated 12,500 people - had been forced from their homes in Hwedza after illegal occupiers ordered work stoppages on 22 farms in the district.

The attacks come about one week after President Robert Mugabe and his government agreed to end the violence associated with their land reform and redistribution programme.