MANDERA, JULY 7, 2015(CISA) – Fourteen people were killed and 11 others injured after gunmen attacked a village near Mandera town, the Kenya Red Cross has said.
According to the Kenya Red Cross, most of the victims of the attack that took place early today, soon after 2 a.m. were quarry workers and a mother.
“…what we understand, they were quarry workers. They were sleeping when they were attacked early hours of this morning,” Abbas Gullet, Secretary General of the Kenya Red Cross told Citizen Television.
Gullet said four of the injured would be evacuated to Nairobi for medical treatment.
Heavily armed men are reported to have crossed from Somalia at Barwaqo settlement around midnight on Monday, July 6.
An intelligence report indicates the attackers were 17 in number, said Mandera County commissioner Alex ole Nkoyo.
“They attacked the two houses the quarry workers were residing… and later placed IED (Improvised Explosive Devices) presumably for the soldiers who would come to the scene,” Ole Nkoyo said.
In December last year, Al-Shabaab militants killed 36 quarry workers in Mandera in a similar attack that took place at night when the victims were sleeping in their tents in Koromey, about 15 kilometres from Mandera town.
The group killed 148 people mostly students at a university in Garissa County in April.
Yesterday’s attack comes weeks after nine other people were killed in inter-clan war in Mandera County.
