"Tanzanian authorities seen opening fire on Maasai people in game reserve dispute"

Tanzanian authorities have been filmed opening fire on Maasai people in the northern Ngorongoro district, an area popular with tourists, following a dispute over turning land used for grazing into a game reserve. Footage shared on social media shows people running from gun shots in the Loliondo area. Further images shared with Climate Home News showed people with small bullet wounds on their leg, feet, top of their back and even on someone’s head. “It started with tear gas and it turned to live bullets,” Joseph Oleshangay, a Maasai lawyer, activist and resident of Ngorongoro, who witnessed the scene, told Climate Home.

“At least 10 people have been wounded. Eight of them are women and two are men, including one who is 70 years old. These are not people who were there to fight,” he said. Climate Home could not independently verify these numbers. Tanzanian police and game wardens arrived in the area on Tuesday to demarcate a 1,500 square kilometres of “village land” as a game reserve for trophy hunting, he said.