By Patrick Beja
Seven patients from the killing fields of Kilelengwani are telling harrowing tales at the Malindi District Hospital where they were admitted.
One of the patients, police constable Patrick Muteheri, was speared in the stomach and shot in both legs and left for dead.
“They thought I was dead and left me,” the officer said from the hospital as he was wheeled into surgery.
Ironically, Muteheri had been attached to a police post put up to protect the ill-fated village after a previous massacre.
Groaning besides the constable is an imam whose pleas for mercy fell on deaf ears when the attackers struck.
According to Imam Maalim Ware Abadada, who is nursing spear wounds in both legs, the attackers caught up with him “when I was talking to the policemen brought to guard our village. I pleaded with the attackers telling them that I am an imam, but they did not care and proceeded to attack me”.
The hospital became more ghoulish with the arrival of a 75-year-old woman whose right arm was severed in a vicious machete attack.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Tana River County residents arrived in Mombasa and Kilifi as they fled the violence, between Orma and Pokomo communities, which has consumed about 100 people in one month.
But they also disclosed that most men had remained behind in the Tana Delta to defend territory, farms and property.
In Mombasa, more than 300 residents of Tana River County, mainly women and children who arrived on Sunday and Monday are now living as destitute after their houses and personal belongings were burnt in the clashes.
Speaking at Kongowea in Mombasa at the weekend, Ms Aboya Galana said her house was burnt and her ten cows stolen during an attack at Chamwanamuma forcing her to rush her sick husband to Mombasa.
