Nomadic tribesmen ordered out of Laikipia

The government on Wednesday ordered nomadic tribesmen in the violence-wracked Laikipia district of central Kenya to return with their cattle to their places of origin, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) radio reported on Thursday. An operation is to be effected from Friday to “ensure that herdsmen who have moved into the area with their livestock from neighbouring districts have left the district,” the report said. The area District Commissioner William Kurumei warned security personnel and administrators against attempting to sabotage the exercise adding that “stern action will be taken against such people,” KBC reported. Kurumei said the herdsmen, who had moved with thousands of livestock into Laikipia district from Samburu and Isiolo districts to escape drought, were creating tension in the district as they were allowing their livestock to move into people’s farms. Meanwhile, church leaders in Kenya’s Rift Valley province have been meeting to discuss the ethnic violence in Laikipia, where at least seven people are reported to have been killed in recent weeks. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) quoted a priest as saying that more than 30 deaths had been noted in six months in two of his parishes. He said the dead had been mostly from the populous Kikuyu tribe, while the raiders had been mostly Samburu and Turkana cattle herders.