By Jeremy Clarke

NAIROBI, April 3 (Reuters) - Nearly 140 Kenyans have been killed and 45,000 have been driven from their homes by a rash of land clashes in the country's west, a leading women's group said on Tuesday.

Six months of violence in the fertile Mount Elgon region near the Ugandan border is a "silent genocide" of women and children, the Maendeleo Ya Wanawake consortium of women's groups with 2 million members said.

Six more people were killed overnight within earshot of the top regional government officer's residence, underscoring a continuing pattern of violence sparked by competition for land and resources in Kenya's more far-flung corners.

The attacks have targeted men, women and children, but the women's group said the women and children were especially at risk.

"Women are being raped, children are maimed by bullets then forced to flee their homes. We must stop the death and the trauma before we can begin negotiating land disputes," spokeswoman Rukia Subow told a Nairobi news conference.

"The violence is forcing thousands to go running for the caves. It is an embarrassment for peace-loving Kenya," she said.

Land is an explosive issue in the east African nation. For decades, top politicians grabbed public land for political patronage, dividing it among members of their tribe or giving it to other tribes to buy loyalty.

The clashes broke out late last year when people displaced from their ancestral land in a government settlement scheme attacked members of a rival clan who were awarded plots, local members of parliament have said.

Police blame the violence on criminal gangs, notably a group of young men calling themselves the Sabaot Land Defence Force.

"The armed militias must be brought into the peace process," Subow said. "Most are just young men, and unemployed."

In the past, politicians keen to keep their seats have clandestinely encouraged clashes and given sanctuary to those who started them at their behest.

Kenya has sent police including its elite paramilitary General Service Unit into the region to crack down on the bloodshed, but they have been accused of beating people for confessions, burning homes and raping women.

Similar clashes over land and resources have occurred sporadically for years in Kenya, most often in its poorer and neglected regions -- especially along its lengthy borders with Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan.

Regional conflicts have made guns easy to acquire and a necessity of daily life in some of the most remote areas where there is little police presence.

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