15 killed in Kenya livestock raid

July 8, 2007 (NAIROBI) — At least 15 people have died in a livestock raid between two Kenyan nomadic tribes in a remote northern area, police said on Sunday.

Herdsmen from the Pokot and Samburu tribes clashed on Saturday in a grazing field in the Samburu district.

The Pokots, a tribe who live further west in the Great Rift Valley, raided the Samburu area, they said.

Daniel Legerded, a local leader in Samburu, said at least 21 people died.

“The fighting started in the morning and continued until lunch hour. Fourteen bandits were killed and seven locals. Two died at the hospital,” he told Reuters by telephone.

Deaths are common during livestock raids between Kenya’s nomadic tribes, particularly in the arid northern regions where easy access to automatic weapons from conflicts in Somalia and Sudan has turned a traditionally rite of passage into a dangerous enterprise.

Kenya suffers from such raids at nearly all of its land borders, stretching from Somalia in the northeast, along Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and south into Tanzania. The lack of infrastructure and forbidding terrain in these areas makes policing difficult.

(Reuters)