Bandits kill over 60 in Kenyan tribal conflict

Bandits have killed over 60 people, including 22 children on their way to school, as part of a brutal tribal conflict over water in arid northeast Kenya.

The attack on Tuesday morning in Turbi, a remote village almost 600km from Nairobi, is believed to have been carried out by the Borana tribe from neighbouring Ethiopia.

Villagers at Turbi, who mainly belong to the rival Gabra clan, say the attackers wanted to gain control of the village, which has better water sources than the rest of the region.

Several hundred Borana stormed Turbi armed with AK-47 rifles, grenades, bows and arrows and machetes in the early hours of Tuesday morning. They opened fire on the local primary school and killed the security guards who tried to stop them before escaping with stolen livestock.

Yesterday dead bodies and bullet casings were still scattered around the market place and primary school. The injured were taken to the nearest hospital, 150km away at Marsabit, in a critical condition.

"The majority of the dead are mothers and their children and most of them died in their school uniforms," local MP Bonaya Godana told reporters. "The situation is very sad on the ground, everybody is mourning the dead."

The two tribes have fought each other with increasing ferocity in the last three months, and this week's killings are believed to be in revenge for an earlier attack.

The local police said they had managed to recover some of the goats, sheep, cattle, camels and donkeys the bandits had stolen, and were increasing security in the area to prevent the Gabra carrying out a retaliatory strike.

Inter-tribal attacks and livestock raids occur frequently on Kenya's borders with Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia and Somalia, but the violence has intensified in recent years as clans compete for diminishing grazing land and sources of water. Arms smuggled into the country from war-torn South Sudan and Somalia have made the rivalry more deadly.

Earlier this year 30 people were killed in similar raids on the Kenya-Somali border, but this week's incident is believed to be the single worst clash since the country's independence.

- INDEPENDENT