Kenya has launched a massive security operation in the northern region, where a massacre and reprisal attacks have left at least 77 people dead this week, officials said on Friday, as the Red Cross appealed for humanitarian aid for displaced people.
”We have deployed a combined team of officers from the military, regular and administrative police to the region where the killings took place,” police spokesperson Jasper Ombati said.
”The team is carrying out an intensive operation [to track] down the attackers and restore security,” he added.
Army spokesperson Bogita Ongeri said the military has also deployed a ”sufficient number” of armoured vehicles while the air force has sent helicopters to patrol areas ground teams cannot reach.
Witnesses in the region said columns of military trucks snaked through the open desert as helicopters hovered overhead to seek the Borana bandits, who on Tuesday raided a Gabra village in Turbi, about 580km north-east of Nairobi, killing at least 56 people — including 22 children.
At least 10 of the assailants were killed during and after the raid. It was followed by a revenge attack by a group of Gabras that killed nine Boranas, including four children, after pulling them from a car driven by a priest.
Two more Borana were killed on Thursday as revenge attacks escalated, according to police.
Officials said both units have sent detectives to the semi-arid region to gather evidence about the deadly attacks that were linked to long-running conflicts over water and pasture.
No arrests have so far been made.
In Nairobi, the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) on behalf of the United Nations Children’s Fund and the government appealed for humanitarian supply to assist at least 6 000 people from isolated communities who sought shelter from potential revenge violence in Marsabit, the region’s hub about 150km south of the village of Turbi where Tuesday’s bloody raid took place.
”To help the community of Marsabit get back on its feet, more relief items are still required to meet the needs that continue to arise,” the KRCS said in a statement to the press.
The appeal includes food and non-food items for 1 000 families for three to six months. Most of the people are currently living with relatives in Marsabit township, they said.
Dozens of patients, wounded in the deadly attack, are still admitted in Marsabit District hospital, while 11 seriously wounded have been airlifted for advanced treatment in the capital, according to the KRCS.
The government has already dispatched relief supplies, doctors and psychologists to help victims, officials say.
On Wednesday, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki condemned the attacks, which are believed to be the worst single episode of inter-clan violence in the country’s post-colonial history, and called for calm.
But a leading Kenyan human rights group lashed out at Kibaki’s government for failing to ensure security and neglecting the remote region, which has been beset by violence from rival clans in the past.
”That hundreds of armed criminals can terrorise a town for hours without the intervention of the country’s security forces is a clear indication that the government has little or no authority in the north-eastern region,” the Kenya Human Rights Commission said the statement.
”Moreover, this incident is indicative of the continuous neglect suffered by Kenyans in the region since independence,” it said in a statement released on Thursday. — Sapa-AFP