Ethiopian and Sudanese tribal fighters attacked and killed nine people in separate cattle raids in Kenya, officials said on Tuesday.
Toposa fighters from southern Sudan gunned down five members of one family, including two schoolchildren, during a raid on Monday in the Turkana district of north-western Kenya, said Bernard Muli, a local police officer.
The Sudanese were apparently taking revenge for the theft of their cattle three days earlier, said Peter Moru of the Roman Catholic Church’s Peace and Justice Commission in Turkana, 650km north-west of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
The raiders sprayed the family with bullets after failing to recover their 20 heads of cattle, Moru said. It was not clear if any member of the family was connected to the initial cattle theft.
In another attack on Monday, cattle raiders from neighbouring Ethiopia attacked a village in the Marsabit district of north-eastern Kenya, killing at least four people before driving off more than 100 heads of cattle, police said.
Kenya’s police later recovered the stolen animals, but the assailants were not found because they had probably crossed into Ethiopia after the raid, said Thomas Chigamba, the provincial police chief.
A lawmaker from the area, Bonay Godana, however, said seven people were killed in the attack in Marsabit, 450km north-east of Nairobi.
The Kenyan officials have contacted Ethiopian security forces to assist in tracking down the assailants. — Sapa-AP