Twenty-three white Zimbabwean farmers have been arrested after violent clashes with militants occupying their land.
The conflict comes amid what farming officials say is increasing farm violence as the planting season nears and farmers and occupiers want to prepare their crops on the same land.
Police spokesman Mr Wayne Bvudzijena said 19 farmers were arrested yesterday and another four today on charges of assaulting five people who had occupied a farm as part of the government's land reform scheme.
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They are expected to appear in court tomorrow.
The conflict broke out over a misunderstanding between the occupiers and the white owner of a farm, the ZIANA official news agency said. At the peak of the conflict, about 60 white farmers were at the farm, beating settlers with sticks and stones, the agency said.
But farming officials said the clashes began when occupiers barricaded a farmer inside his home outside Chinhoyi, 100 kilometres northwest of Harare.
"A farm owner was besieged in his house and two farmers came to [his] assistance, and those farmers were stoned and assaulted" by the occupiers, a spokesman for the Commercial Farmers' Union said. More farmers came to help those under attack, he said.
Violence broke out on Zimbabwe's white-owned farms 18 months ago, after President Robert Mugabe lost a referendum on a new constitution.
Mr Mugabe has openly backed the forcible occupations of hundreds of white-owned farms as part of his scheme to redress colonial inequities in land ownership.
AFP