Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has exposed torture and appalling levels of sexual violence in a conflict in western Kenya

It says people there are caught up in fighting which it claims is being ignored by the international community. A major military operation to neutralize a militia group called the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF) has left thousands of civilians trapped. The militia took up arms over a land allocation scheme it considers unfair. MSF says there are victims of "indiscriminate violence" on both sides. The SLDF says it is fighting for ancestral land in the fertile Mount Elgon region belonging to the Sabaot community, but has been accused of killing members of rival ethnic groups. Correspondents say much of the chaos witnessed in Kenya after the country's presidential election in December 2007 was sparked by long-running disputes over land.

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