Fourteen killed in Tana River clashes

Fourteen people were killed and 13 seriously injured in Tana River District, eastern Kenya, on Sunday when tensions between Orma and Pokomo communities over the use of land and water resources erupted into violence.

Some 1,200 Pokomo agricuralists were forced to flee their homes to escape the fighting and sought sanctuary in a catholic mission in the village of Tarasaa, Pius Murithi, Assistant Development Coordinator for the international nongovernmental organisations Caritas told IRIN on Tuesday.

Many Orma pastoralists had also moved away from the area to seek greater security among relatives elsewhere, Murithi added.

Kenya Television Network (KTN) on Monday quoted police spokesman Peter Kimanthi as saying that eight of the dead were members of the Pokomo tribe, and six were Orma pastoralists.

Some 80 Pokomo manyattas (dwellings) had also been set on fire, and over 50 armed police officers had been sent to the district to restore calm, Kimanthi said.

"The security team that moved into the area was armed to the teeth and was forcing the [Orma] raiders to retreat into the hills," AFP quoted a local trader as saying.

Murithi said violence had broken out following a misunderstanding as some Orma tribesmen were driving their cattle past a Pokomo settlement. The Pokomo thought they had come under attack and began fighting the pastoralists with machetes and spears, he said.

"The tension between the two communities has been so high that they just needed a trigger," he added.

Tension between the two communities rose sharply after the murder by Orma tribesman on Saturday, 17 November, of a Pokomo man as he was collecting firewood, according to Murithi. The man's sons, who had been accompanying their father, fled to a nearby Pokomo settlement and told villagers their father had been kidnapped; on returning to the spot where they had left the man, he was found to have been hacked to death, he added.

While the Pokomo accuse the Orma of allowing their livestock encroach on their farms and destroying crops, the Orma complain that Pokomo farmlands are too close to the banks of the Tana River and prevent the herders from using the river to water their cattle.

Some 70 people have now been killed over the last year as a result of repeated clashes between the communities, and Pokomo elders have claimed that the Orma have been accumulating firearms in preparation for more attacks.

"The clashes will continue," Murithi said. "These are problems that will continue for ever."

Following the deaths of four Pokomos during an Orma attack in October, Kenyan police and security forces began an operation to recover illegal firearms in the district.

Murithi told IRIN, however, that the police had tried to rid the area of arms many times, but had always failed.

"People will only give up their guns if the government can first guarantee their safety," he added.

Caritas has recently joined together with several national and international agencies to establish a Local Peace Coordination Committee in Tana River District. According to Murithi, the Committee was working to involve both communities in development activities in the district.

"We make them work together to see that their needs are not so different," he said.