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Hundreds of
people are killed every year in such
clashes, many going unreported because of a
lack of reliable information about them.
State Commissioner of Police Adeola Adeniji
said the divisional crime officer for the
area was killed in the violence.
ONITSHA
Clashes
between rival ethnic groups in eastern
Nigeria's Ebonyi state on Saturday killed at
least 50 people, the state government
spokesman said, and police said mobile units
had been sent to the state to quell the
violence.
The clashes
erupted from a long running rivalry between
the Ezza and Ezilo people of Ishielu
district that periodically flares up.
There was no
suggestion it had anything to do with wider
security problems in the country stemming
from a violent Islamist insurgency that set
off a wave of deadly bombs on Christmas Day.
But they are
likely to add to President Goodluck
Jonathan's mounting security woes at a time
when his forces are stretched.
"Up to 60
people died in the violence. It is difficult
to give the exact figure because when we
visited Ezilo community, which was the scene
of the incident today ... villagers were
still bringing out corpses," Ebonyi state
spokesman Onyekachi Eni told Reuters by
telephone. "Fifty corpses were shown to us."
Violent
disputes over land are common in Africa's
most populous country because the majority
of its 160 million people are subsistence
farmers living in rural areas with few means
of arbitrating disputes.
Hundreds of
people are killed every year in such
clashes, many going unreported because of a
lack of reliable information about them.
State
Commissioner of Police Adeola Adeniji said
the divisional crime officer for the area
was killed in the violence. "Mobile police
have been sent there and the inspector
general has directed more to come," Adeniji
said.
Chioma Oke, an
Ezilo who survived the clashes, said they
started around 5 a.m.
"We heard
sporadic gunshots and we began to run. They
burned our houses. They said they were
retaliating for an attack on them last
year," she said.
Courtesy
Reuters
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