More people are feared to have died during two nights of attacks
and retaliatory raids between two pastoralist communities in Turkana
and Baringo counties.
However, police yesterday said
they had not found any bodies, shrouding in mystery earlier reports of
an attack that led to 46 fatalities.
“We were at the
scene but did not see anything,” said Mr Peter Pamba, the officer
leading Administration Police in the operation initiated after reports
claimed that 46 people had been killed in a bandit raid. “We will
continue with the operation tomorrow,” said Mr Pamba last evening.
Earlier
in the day, Tiaty MP Asman Kamama had asked security forces to move
into the greater Suguta belt and pacify the region, which he said had
been taken over by bandits.
Senior
government officers had said that a remote village in Turkana East,
identified as Nadome, had been attacked by bandits on Monday.
Yesterday,
Mr Kamama, who chairs the National Assembly’s committee on National
Security, asked the government to boost security in the volatile region.
Nadome,
where 46 people were reported to have died on Monday night, is in the
Suguta Valley, on the boundary between Turkana and East Pokot.
In
Rift Valley, another government source who refused to be identified
claimed that the toll had reached 94, with many still missing.
And
in Nairobi, Mr Kamama, whose Tiaty Constituency is one of the areas
affected, told reporters that heavily armed warriors from Turkana raided
Silda ward in his constituency and killed 14 herders from 10 manyattas
before stealing their livestock.
In retaliation, the affected community on the Pokot side launched a counter-attack in which 36 people were killed.
The
MP said in neighbouring Loiyangalani district, 13 people were also
killed on Monday while six others were killed yesterday in an area near
Baragoi, where 40 police officers were massacred by bandits three years
ago. No one has been brought to book over the killing of the officers to
date.
“The Suguta belt has become the wild West, where
banditry has become a way of life. The situation is so bad that the
locals believe that it’s impossible to drive bandits away from the
area,” said Mr Kamama.
Mr Warfa confirmed 46 deaths on
the first day of the fighting, but the death toll is suspected to have
risen after retaliatory attacks.
It was difficult for the Nation to
establish with certainty what was happening in the volatile area
yesterday because the region has a poor mobile phone coverage. Calls to
the Nation reporters on the ground were not going through.
Neither were those of government officials who had gone to assess the
security situation.
“A team of officers has just flown
to the area so let us wait for them to give us the final number,” said
Mr Warfa when asked exactly how many people had been killed.
A
local administrator from the area had earlier told the Daily Nation
team that a boundary dispute was the underlying problem behind the
attacks.
In Nairobi, Mr Kamama asked the government to
come up with a plan to ensure that all roads in the volatile region are
reopened and the Rapid Deployment Unit of the Administration Police sent
to provide security.
On Monday night, a security
source said that the raiders who attacked Nadome were ambushed by police
officers from Kapedo but changed course and started driving the stolen
livestock in a different direction, towards Silale and Naudo areas in
the Suguta Valley.
The harsh terrain and poor
communication make it difficult for security teams, including the Kenya
Defence Forces based at Kapedo, to pursue raiders.
About 200 people have lost their lives over the past one year in various attacks in the region.
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