Mandera Massacre: Death scene's proximity to border 'a big challenge'

Tens of blood-stained gloves welcome you to the desolate location where 28 Nairobi-bound passengers met their death along the Mandera-Nairobi road on Saturday morning.

Also strewn on the scene are water bottles, stained handkerchiefs and other personal effects, all evidence of a brutal end of some of their owners.

On the marshy road, an offshoot of the main Mandera-El wak route, evidence of a struggling bus is all clear – a deep rut formed by tyres and stones spread to enhance rubber grip.

On the side where the 28 were lined up for death, drying blood is evident. Spent bullet cartridges are scattered around the scene.

A bloodied and lonesome Muslim cap lies on ground. Besides it, prints of military boots which descended on the area in rescue efforts.

There are no witnesses there and no birds chirping around.

We traced the boggy track while inside a chopper and realised it ended in an abandoned quarry about a kilometre away. However, near the quarry, smaller roads shoot from the main one and meander to the left. A number of them join a bigger one ahead.

We overflew the main road and crossed into Somalia, turning back by a river and leaving the road to continue to the mountains deeper into Somalia.

"It goes off Khadija Haji, a smaller town inside Somalia," a local familiar with the area later told The Standard.

County Police Commander Noah Mwivanda said the rescue mission was not without caution. He said KDF jets had to overfly the area several times to ward off the attackers before rescue was done.

Mwivanda told The Standard the area's proximity to the border remains a big challenge given that locals share a culture and language with those in Somalia.

People integrated

"Without fear of contradiction, I can tell you that they are well integrated with the people in Somalia. The stretch that is prone to attacks happens to be nearer the border than any other," Mwivanda said.

He has appealed to Mandera residents to stay calm: "They are pushing us into a certain direction and we know it. We know where they are pushing us to and we plead with the people of this area to ignore them."

After the attacks, we were told Somalis crossing into Mandera from the small Somali border town of Bulla Hawa were "thrashed a little bit" by their Kenyan Somali brethren.

"They are spoiling for us here," a resident told The Standard. The town is separated from Mandera town by the border control office. Apart from the border office walls, there is no other known border point and people here live on assumptions.

While chatting with the policemen at the border control, a gunshot rang from the Somali side of the town and apart from our crew, no one else appeared shaken or moved.

"That is an AK-47 shot, it's their play thing over there," one of the officers accompanying us told us.

According to Mwivanda, the attackers have since been bombed off by KDF.

He said what remained is to track down their co-conspirators in the area who may have facilitated the attackers.

In Mandera town, buses which ply shorter routes to Ramu, Banisa, and other outlying areas were operating as usual while those to Nairobi had been grounded.

At the Mandera divisional police headquarters, residents who turned up to claim the luggage of their kin were turned away.