The Kenyan president announced Monday, February 13 the deployment of troops in the north of the country hit by drought and insecurity. In the past six months, more than 100 civilians and 16 policemen have been killed in the northern Rift Valley.
With our correspondent in Nairobi, Florence Morice
For six months, acts of banditry against civilians and against the police have multiplied in the northern Rift Valley. They are fueled by ancient ethnic rivalries and aggravated by the drought hitting the Horn of Africa. The government considers this to be a national emergency “.
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The figures revealed on Monday by the Kenyan Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki are edifying: in six months ” more than 100 civilians and 16 policemen were killed in armed attacks in the North Rift Valley “. The last of these attacks dates back to the evening of February 12. According to the Kenyan press, a future teacher was raped by armed bandits in Kainuk, in the south of Turkana.
A few days earlier, not far from there, four police officers had lost their lives in an ambush, twelve other people wounded by bullets were hospitalized. ” Gangs have stepped up acts of terror against innocent Kenyans and law enforcement “, going up to ” burn down schools “, deplores in a press release the Minister of the Interior.
Sunday, during a mass in Nakuru, the head of state promised to toughen the tone against the perpetrators of these attacks. ” We will treat them without mercy said William Ruto, before asking his minister to leave Nairobi to live in the North Rift Valley. until Kenyan citizens stop to lose one’s life “.
No details were given on the number of soldiers who will be deployed. Already in 2017, the then President Uhuru Kenyatta had deployed the army in this region after violent clashes, but without putting a lasting end to the cycles of violence which are recurrent there.