Ten killed in violence along Kenya-Ethiopia border

June 6, 2006 (MARSABIT, Kenya) — Ten people were killed and five others wounded when suspected Ethiopian bandits attacked a Kenyan village in a region along the Ethiopian border plagued by conflict over livestock and grazing land.

The gunmen killed five people on Monday in a raid on a village in Kenya’s northeastern Marsabit district before police arrived to repel the attackers. In a firefight that lasted the whole day, police shot dead five bandits, a local official said.

“The bandits had crossed over to Kenya and attacked a settlement at Bale-Saru,” the district commissioner for the area, Mutea Iringo, told Reuters on Tuesday.

He said the raiders made off with more than 2,000 sheep and goats stolen from the same village where bandits shot and killed two people on Saturday.

Cattle rustling and cross-border raids are common for pastoralist communities living along the porous border where fighting over scarce resources like pasture and water has been exacerbated by a drought in the region.

Residents of Marsabit appealed to the government to help secure the border.

“If the government does not beef up security along the border, more attacks and counter attacks will continue,” resident Jirma Galgalo said.

Kenya sent hundreds of security forces to the border in April to try to quell a wave of raids from Ethiopian cattle rustlers.

(Reuters)