{KENYA President Uhuru Kenyatta Sunday vowed to punish those behind a deadly weekend ambush in a restive northern region that killed 20 police officers and two civilians.
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Saturday’s attack took place during a security operation in Kapedo, in the arid and impoverished region of Lake Turkana that is prey to regular raids and score-settlings between rival communities. “We will take firm action against those who killed security officers in this area,” Kenyatta said, visiting the site of the ambush with Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku.
It was a deadly week in Kenya, with the army saying it had repelled a machete attack on a military barracks in a tourist resort near Mombasa on Sunday, killing six assailants.
About a dozen youths tried to break into the barracks in the Indian Ocean town of Nyali at around 0230 GMT, the army said in a statement.
“Soldiers… responded, killing five of the men. The sixth was pursued and shot dead in a nearby forest.”
The army said one soldier was hacked with one of the attackers’ machetes and was being treated for his injuries.
While the military said the attackers were only armed with machetes, witnesses spoke of an intense exchange of fire.
“We heard intense shooting at about 5:00 am,” one man who lives nearby said. “I thought we were having a coup d’etat because when I came out I saw lots of soldiers on the road, who were going towards the barracks.”
There was no immediate information about the identity of the attackers.
String of Shabaab attacks
Kenya has been hit by a string of mostly bomb and grenade attacks in recent months blamed on Somalia’s Al Shabaab Islamist insurgents.
Kenyan troops are fighting the extremists in Somalia as part of an African Union force AMISOM.
Mombasa County Commissioner Nelson Marwa said the assailants were met with “fierce fire” even though the soldiers were probably sleeping when the attack started. It was raining heavily at the time, so they probably thought the soldiers were asleep.
“How on earth would a gang of criminals in their right minds want to raid an army barracks in an independent country,” he said.
Turkana unrest
While the Nyali raid was brazen and audacious, and the Lake Turkana attacks deadly, they were not the worst.
Two years ago, more than 40 police officers who had been chasing cattle thieves were killed around 100 kilometres (60 miles) further north, in an ambush unprecedented in the east African nation.
Last week, five people, including three police officers, were killed in another attack in the Kapedo area, according to police sources.
Diminishing water supplies and grazing areas have aggravated conflicts between communities in the area which is mainly populated by nomadic herders. Local police are notoriously under-equipped and can find themselves outgunned because of increasing numbers of illegal firearms appearing in the area.
http://mgafrica.com
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