At least 11 herdsmen killed in harvest-time clashes

Clashes between nomadic herdsman and landowners over land in south-western Niger have killed at least 11 people and injured about 30 others, a local government official said. "Several victims had had their throats slit or been burned alive," Issa Yacouba, the official in charge of the district where the violence erupted, told a private radio station on Sunday. The clashes happened on Friday night near Gaya town, around 250 km south of the capital, Niamey, near Niger's southwestern borders with Nigeria and Benin. Officials said indigenous Hausa farmers complained after cattle belonging to nomadic herdsmen were found grazing on their land causing damage to their crops. The herdsman refused to move his animals and fighting broke out. Yacouba said that 80 granaries had also been destroyed during the clashes, and dozens of cattle had been beheaded. The official said that fights between landowners and herdsmen over fields were common in many areas of Niger, especially around harvest-time. One of the bloodiest clashes happened in 1991, when more than 100 people were killed in a similar dispute over grazing rights in eastern Niger. Subsistence farmers account for the majority of the 11 million population in this landlocked West African country. Niger, which consists largely of desert, is one of the world's poorest countries, ranked second from bottom in the United Nations Human Development Index.