Sixty-six people, at least 22 of them children, were killed in a brutal raid on a remote village in northeastern Kenya in what is believed to be the country’s worst single episode of inter-clan violence to date.
Bonaya Godana, the member of Parliament for North Horr district in which the attack took place, said that 56 villagers, most of them young children and their mothers, had been killed in Tuesday’s raid on Turbi village.
Police said 10 of the attackers had also died in the early morning raid which terrified residents said was an attack by the Borana clan on the rival Gabra clan spurred by long-running disputes over water and pasture.
Godana, a former Kenyan foreign minister who was touring the scene of the attack, told French news agency Agence France Presse that many of the victims had been shot dead while getting ready to go to school in the village about 580km northeast of Nairobi.
”The situation is very sad on the ground, everybody is mourning the dead,” Godana said.
Godana said 56 people have been confirmed dead — which included 22 schoolchildren, and that ”most of them died in their school uniforms”.
He added that 10 schoolchildren were among the seriously wounded.
”The majority of the dead are mothers and their children,” Godana said.
”Three other people people are still missing and we suspect that they are dead.”
Police said earlier on Wednesday that they had been able to confirm the deaths of only 45 villagers, mostly women and children, and 10 attackers, but Godana and residents of the area said the toll was higher with hundreds wounded by gunshots.
Dead bloodied bodies and bullet casings littered the ground around traditional hut compounds known as manyatta, a trading centre and the nearby primary school.
Survivors said that the attackers were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, bows and arrows and machetes.
They said the attack began when between 200 and 500 Borana raiders overpowered security guards in Turbi, which is populated mainly by the Gabra, and opened fire on two manyattas and a primary school.
Officials said a combined Kenyan police and military team, backed by three helicopters, was pursuing the surviving raiders near the Kenya-Ethiopia border.
In Nairobi, national police spokesperson Jaspher Ombati said that security had been ramped-up in the area not only to catch the attackers but to to forestall potential revenge raids.
”We are in hot pursuit,” said Robert Kipkemoi Kitur, the assistant commissioner of police in the region, adding that authorities had so far recovered 50 000 goats and sheep, 10 head of cattle, 10 camels and four donkeys stolen by the bandits.
He said at least 18 wounded villagers had been admitted to Marsabit District Hospital, an ill-equipped facility in the nearest town to Turbi about 150km south, most in critical condition.
Roba Elema, a police reservist and water ministry employee in Marsabit who was the first outsider to reach the scene of the attack, said he thought the final death toll could be higher that those supplied by Godana and the police.
”It seems they were taken without warning,” said Elema in Marsabit. ”I believe the death toll could be much higher than what is being confirmed now.”
The Borana and Garba have feuded persistently over water and pasture in the semi-arid region and Garba clan elders accused the Borana of launching the attack to take control of Turbi, an oasis in the parched region.
Inter-clan rivalry in Kenya, particularly in this sparsely-populated semi-arid region has been rife for decades, sparking attacks and counter-attacks, notably over access to rare pasture and water.
However, Tuesday’s attack is believed to be the deadliest single incident of inter-clan violence in Kenya’s post-colonial history.
The previous most serious episode occurred earlier this year along the Kenyan-Somali border when 30 members of the Garre and Murule clans were killed in a raid by the Murule in March. – Sapa-AFP