Zimbabwe farm workers said to attack war veterans

HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) -- A crowd of 200 black farm workers attacked 60 war veterans occupying white-owned agricultural land in northern Zimbabwe Monday night and beat them with sticks, a farmers' spokesman said.

MESSAGE BOARD Zimbabwe's future

"The situation is very volatile as we speak," Kelvin Weare, a farming community security spokesman, told Reuters by telephone from Karoi, a farming town about 120 miles northwest of the capital Harare.

"They beat them with sticks. A number of war veterans were quite badly hurt," Weare said. "They were trying to chase them (the war veterans) off the farm."

He said police were investigating the attack but had made no arrests so far.

"They (the farm workers) were apparently fed up with all the intimidation that has been going on the past few months," he said, adding that the farmer they worked for now feared for his life.

Zimbabwe's countryside has been tense since February, when self-styled veterans of the country's 1970s liberation war invaded hundreds of white-owned farms demanding that whites return land they say was stolen at gunpoint during British rule.

President Robert Mugabe says he plans to acquire nearly half the 30 million acres owned by 4,500 white farmers to resettle landless blacks.

A group of veterans Tuesday blocked a highway to protest against the slow pace of land redistribution.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

For more Africa news, myCNN.com will bring you news from the areas and subjects you select.

See related sites about Africa

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.