North Kenya death toll rises to 55-police

By Wangui Kanina

NAIROBI (Reuters) – At least 55 people were hacked and shot
to death in a raid by cattle rustlers and a subsequent revenge
attack by locals in a remote area of northern Kenya, police
said on Wednesday.

Up to 400 attackers carrying assault rifles and machetes
killed 45 people and wounded 18 when they struck Dida Galgalu
village in Marsabit District, about 100 km (62 miles) south of
the Ethiopian border, in a raid for livestock early on Tuesday.

Police said locals from the Gabra clan then attacked a
truck carrying people from the rival Borana clan, which they
accused of the raid, and killed 10 of them in revenge.

“The death toll has risen to 55,” Deputy Police
Commissioner David Kimaiyo told Reuters. “Ten innocent people
from Borana (community) who were going for a seminar in a
Catholic mission vehicle were all massacred.”

Tony Mwangi of Kenya’s Red Cross said 60 people had been
killed, but there was no immediate confirmation of that number.

Police said women and children were among the dead, but
they had no figures on how many. Twelve children were among
those seriously injured, police said.

Television footage shot at Marsabit District Hospital
showed children with bullet wounds and deep gashes on legs and
arms.

Police officers killed four bandits at the village and shot
dead another six as they chased the raiders, who fled across
the Ethiopian border, police said.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission said it was appalled by
the government’s failure to prevent the killings.

“That hundreds of armed criminals can terrorize a town for
hours without intervention of the country’s security forces is
a clear indication that the government has little authority in
the northeastern region,” the rights group said.

SPARSELY POPULATED

Politicians from northeastern Kenya have long complained
that the sparsely populated region has been neglected by
successive governments since independence from Britain in 1963.

Members of parliament from the area said the attackers were
from Ethiopia and complained that Kenyan forces seemed afraid
to pursue the attackers into Ethiopia.

“I cannot confirm or deny that those people (attackers)
were Ethiopians because investigations are still going on,”
Kenya’s internal security minister, John Michuki, told
parliament.

The minister said the 812 km (507 miles) border with
Ethiopia was difficult to patrol.

Clashes in Kenya’s arid east and north are frequent as
clans fight for scant resources, and cross-border livestock
raids are frequent. Local authorities and tribal elders in
Ethiopia and Kenya had been holding recent talks on how to curb
the cross-border raids in the area, Kimaiyo said.

Violence has hit in several parts of Kenya in recent
months, mainly due to disputes over land, water and grazing
rights.