NAIROBI: Kenya has lifted a night-time curfew imposed on a western region more than two years ago when a local militia rebelled against a government land resettlement scheme.

Security forces crushed the Sabaot Land Defence Force last year in the Mount Elgon region, near the Kenya-Uganda border, after imposing the curfew in August 2007. "People are now free to walk freely. There is no more curfew at night," the region's district commissioner Kassim Farah said on the weekend. Human rights groups repeatedly criticised the security forces as well as the rebels for torturing and mistreating civilians, but the military rejected the accusations.