KENYA: Children are among those killed by raiders armed with guns, machetes and spears who attacked a Kenyan village leaving at least 30 people dead

Record ID: 362449

  • Title: KENYA: Children are among those killed by raiders armed with guns, machetes and spears who attacked a Kenyan village leaving at least 30 people dead
  • Date: 21st December 2012
  • Summary: KIPAONI VILLAGERS VIEWING BODIES VARIOUS BODIES OF SLAIN ATTACKERS
  • Embargoed: 5th January 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Crime
  • Reuters ID: LVAB14OFY7V27YIB1QLUAGPIAPK0
  • Story Text: Raiders armed with guns, machetes and spears killed 40 people, including several children, and torched their houses in Kenya's coastal region on Friday (December 21), police and Red Cross said, heightening security concerns ahead of next year's election.
    Nine of the raiders were also killed in what appeared to have been a revenge attack by settled Pokomo farmers against the semi-nomadic Orma pastoralists after a series of clashes in August in which more than 100 people were killed.
    The two groups have fought for years over access to grazing, farmland and water, but human rights groups have blamed the latest violence on politicians seeking to drive away parts of the local population they believe will vote for their rivals in presidential and parliamentary elections in March.
    If those charges are true, it further raises fears of a repeat of the ethnic violence that rocked Kenya after the disputed 2007 presidential election, in which more than 1,200 people were killed countrywide and many more thousands driven from their homes.

    "26 locals were killed and many were injured. 10 Pokomo farmers were killed. We think there is a lot of politics involved," said a local villager.
    President Mwai Kibaki instructed security forces to prevent further deaths. Kibaki imposed a curfew in September and sent extra security forces to the area to try to end the violence, intensified by an influx of weapons in the last few years.
    Police sent an additional team of 200 paramilitary officers to the region to quell the fighting.
    Police had already been deployed to the area in September after the attacks in August. It was unclear how the latest violence erupted while officers were on the ground, something which also baffling to the police.
    Prolonged trouble at the coast would cause jitters among some tourists and may affect Kenya's vital tourism industry, already damaged by the kidnappings of Western tourists from beach resorts by Somali gunmen and grenade attacks in the port city of Mombasa, at the height of the tourist season.
    Dams along the Tana River, Kenya's longest, supply about two-thirds of the east African state's electricity, but the fighting has so far not threatened electricity generation.
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