KEY POINTS:
KERICHO - Looters in one of Kenya's major tea-growing areas in the Rift Valley struck Unilever's Chebown tea estate in a bout of post-election violence, causing workers at it and all the surrounding farms to flee.
A Reuters photographer at Unilever's Chebown tea estate said looters torched the farm's tractors and trucks, looted and burned its storage facility and tried to burn the tea plants, but were foiled by cold, moist weather.
All of the labourers, who come from the Kisii tribe, had fled that farm and others nearby after attacks by members of the local Kalenjin tribe targeting them, the Reuters photographer said.
Kisiis are seen as supporting President Mwai Kibaki, whom the opposition accuses of rigging a hotly contested election, which plunged the country into a week of violence.
Some Kalenjins support the opposition, and mobs of young Kalenjin men have gone on a rampage across the Rift Valley, targeting tribes seen as pro-government.
The government has called some of the killing genocide plotted by the opposition. The opposition rejects that. Previous elections in the Rift Valley have seen ethnic clashes ignited by politicians keen to shore up their support.
- REUTERS
