Non-locals flee homes, camp at KDF airstrip after Mandera attack
Hundreds of non-locals camp at a KDF airstrip on November 25, 2014, waiting to be evacuated from the county. PHOTO | MANASE OTSIALO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- All public service vehicles and the three weekly flights from Mandera were fully booked.
- Six unions have told their members to stay away from the areas affected by insecurity until the government guaranteed their safety.
Hundreds of non-locals working in Mandera have fled their homes and are camping at the Kenya Defence Forces airstrip demanding to be evacuated.
The residents spent Monday night at the airstrip and said they feared being attacked in their homes.
“We feel safe here than at the AP camp,” one of the workers said when the deputy County Commissioner, Mr Elvis Korir, tried to persuade them to move.
The teachers, health workers, construction workers and other civil servants said they feared for their lives following reports that Al-Shabaab informers had marked their houses with the intention of attacking them.
All public service vehicles and the three weekly flights from Mandera were fully booked.
Hundreds of non-locals camp at a KDF airstrip on November 25, 2014, waiting to be evacuated from the county. PHOTO | MANASE OTSIALO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
Six unions have told their members to stay away from the areas affected by insecurity until the government guaranteed their safety.
The calls came after gunmen killed 28 people headed to Nairobi from Mandera on Saturday morning.
Twenty-four of those killed in the Saturday attack were teachers, seven of them from the same school.
Ms Beryl Okoth and her six-month-old daughter, Bavine Scovian, at Kenya Defence Forces airstrip in Mandera. PHOTO | MANASE OTSIALO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
The other three were doctors and one was a policeman. Of the teachers, 20 taught in private institutions, two in public high schools, one in a primary school and one in a nursery school.
