Violence rocks Malaysian towns

Violence rocks Malaysian towns

KUALA LUMPUR (AP): Police set up roadblocks and made vehicle- to-vehicle searches for weapons on Friday after a feud erupted into community violence which killed one man in townships on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.

Rival villagers wielding long knives and clubs skirmished for hours late Thursday before hundreds of police broke up the clashes using truck-mounted water cannons, local news reports said.

Thirteen people were injured in the clashes and a 45-year-old man died later in hospital, police chief Nik Ismail Nik Yusuf said, cited by the national news agency Bernama.

Nik Ismail said eight people were arrested after the fight, which broke out when someone fired a slingshot into the windscreen of a villager's car, which led to a quarrel between two families.

More than 400 policemen were deployed to the troubled area - low-cost suburbs on Kuala Lumpur's eastern fringe - before the situation was brought under control.