Nairobi — A Legio Maria sect member was killed yesterday as two groups fought during a prayer service.

Mr Joseph Okech, 26, died after being hit in the nape with a wooden plank yanked off a huge cross standing on the church compound, by a worshipper.

The clash at the St Peter's Legio Maria Church, Dandora, Nairobi, was a result of a leadership dispute between the two groups.

Prayers ended prematurely as the clash started at 8am.

Police stormed the church and dispersed the fighting mob as women and children screamed and ran for safety.

Trouble started when a group invaded the church during the sermon, and tried to eject a priest whose leadership they were opposed to.

Witnesses said Mr Okech was felled by a blow to the nape by a member of the invading group who had suffered a beating from his opponents earlier.

"The attacker just rose from where he had fallen, broke off the horizontal part of the big cross in the compound and started beating everyone in sight. He reached Okech and hit him on the back of the head with the wooden plank," said a witness who declined to be named.

A crowd of onlookers and other worshippers attracted by the wailing gathered at Kinyago police post in Dandora, where Mr Okech's body was taken awaiting transportation to the mortuary.

Buru Buru police boss Leo Nyongesa said eight people had been arrested and detained at the police station in connection with the skirmishes.

"The eight are with us here. The statements they have recorded will help us know what actually happened in the church," he said in his office.

Mr Okech, a carpenter and former altar boy, leaves behind a widow, Carolyne Adhiambo and two children - Dalmas, 3, and Mary, an infant.

The widow was inconsolable at the police post where she identified the body.

Bishop Lawrence Ochieng', under whose jurisdiction the church falls, termed the incident "a painful episode never before witnessed in the history of the sect."

He blamed it on a renegade group led by a former local priest who was allegedly ejected from the sect after he declined to take up a routine transfer to a church in Ongata Rongai, in 2000.