At least four people believed to be members of an armed militia from Ethiopia are reported to have died in a gun battle with Kenyan security volunteers near the country’s northern border, according to police accounts of the incident.
The confrontation is said to have taken place on Sunday evening at Loyoro, a settlement in Kibish Sub-County, Turkana, close to where Kenya’s border meets Ethiopia. Officers say members of the Dassanech community crossed into Kenyan territory at around 6.30pm, allegedly seeking to retaliate for deaths recorded during a raid that had been repelled two days earlier.
Local National Police Reservists are said to have been alerted after residents raised an alarm on spotting the armed group, leading to an exchange of gunfire in an area covered by reeds along a water source. Police say the reservists eventually gained the upper hand, destroying makeshift shelters the alleged militia members had been using, and that four attackers were killed in the process. An unspecified number of others are reported to have fled with injuries. No casualties were recorded on the Kenyan side, according to security officials speaking on Tuesday.
The clash has left residents on edge, with officers warning of a heightened risk of reprisal attacks in the coming days. Additional security patrols have reportedly been deployed to the area, and local administrators say they are in contact with counterparts across the border to try to calm tensions.
Authorities describe cattle rustling as a long-running driver of hostility in the region, with armed groups from both Kenya and Ethiopia said to cross the porous frontier in search of livestock to steal. The area falls under Operation Maliza Uhalifu, a security initiative covering Turkana, Baringo, West Pokot, Samburu and Marsabit that targets banditry and related crimes across Kenya’s north and the Rift Valley.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen has previously said the operation is meant to go beyond enforcement, aiming to draw affected communities into economic and development activities as an alternative to cattle raiding. Police credit the wider crackdown with the recovery of a number of illegal firearms in recent months, even as sporadic clashes like Sunday’s underline how fragile calm along the border remains.