Kenyan security forces on Wednesday fought Ethiopian gunmen along the increasingly restive border between the two countries where drought has fuelled inter-clan and tribal clashes and heightened tensions.
At least one person, a Kenyan officer, was wounded in the gun battle that occurred when a joint team of Kenyan army, police and border patrol encountered an armed gang that had crossed the border from southern Ethiopia.
”One of our officers was injured as they were repulsing Ethiopian crooks who had crossed over to come and loot,” Kenyan government spokesperson Alfred Mutua told Agence France-Presse.
He said the skirmishes erupted in heavily Muslim areas around Kenya’s Qilta outpost near the volatile border town of Moyale, about 620km north-east of Nairobi.
Adan Wachu, the secretary general of the Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims (SUPKEM), said he had heard from eyewitnesses to the fighting that several Kenyan forces had been wounded.
”I am getting information from that we have suffered casualties on our end as result of fighting between the army and attackers from Ethiopia,” he told AFP.
Earlier this month, Kenyan authorities deployed additional security to patrol the frontier dividing the countries, which has been destabilised by decades of inter-tribe fighting often sparked by cross-border cattle-rustling.
Last year, tribal raiders, believed to be from Ethiopia, attacked a Kenyan village in the region, setting off deadly revenge attacks that, along with the initial raid, claimed at least 82 lives and sent tensions soaring.
Those tensions have been exacerbated by a searing drought that has hit East Africa, putting some 11-million people at risk of starvation and straining already thin water and pasture for livestock. — AFP
