Survivors recall pain and agony in the jungle after Samburu attack

Constable David Mwiti, an Administration Police officer attached to the Baragoi AP camp had been to several missions to recover stolen animals during the three months he was posted there.

But the mission on Saturday last week, in which 37 colleagues were killed by cattle rustlers, was the deadliest he had ever witnessed.

Mr Mwiti said about 107 police officers left the Samburu outpost and headed towards the mountains that morning hoping to recover the stolen animals.

Scaled mountains

He remembers the officers breaking into four groups, one in front and at the back and two others on either side, before they set off for the mission.

Mr Mwiti, 27, said the police brigade first scaled the first mountain, to get a view of the raiders or the stolen animals, and were able to spot three men in a bush and a herd of cattle they believed was the one that had been stolen.

“We climbed at least two mountains and were about to go up a third one when we heard gunshots and realised one group was under attack,” he said on his hospital bed at the Kenyatta National Hospital on Wednesday.

“What followed was a hail of bullets as the policemen took cover, not knowing where the shots were coming from or who was firing them,” he added.

Mr Mwiti was hit twice on the left leg and was carried off by another group of police officers, who were also running away from the bullets.

They however abandoned him in a thicket and fled. The officer took cover under a rock, where he tore part of his jacket and tied his leg to control bleeding.

The next two days were gruelling as he was forced to crawl up a mountain and spend a night in a thicket. He tried in vain, by waving his jacket in the air, to attract the attention of a rescue helicopter that hovered above.

“I did not eat anything during the time I was in the jungle, and was only saved by a politician who happened to pass by the road, where I lay helpless,” he recalls.

Earlier, two Kenya Police Reservists (KPRs) told NTV in an interview that the scene of the attack was dangerous, and that the police were ambushed by over 100 armed raiders.

Another survivor admitted at KNH, Mr Abdillahi Nur, 21, recalled how he lived for three days on water and biscuits in Baragoi as he and his colleagues pursued the raiders who had stolen 450 heads of cattle.

“At Nachola village which is inhabited by Turkanas, I was almost shot dead by a woman before I was escorted to a GSU camp from where I was later airlifted to KNH for treatment,” he said.
Thirteen police officers are admitted to the referral hospital following the attack.

Hospital spokesman Kibet Mengich said many of those admitted in the institution’s private wards are being treated for gun shot wounds. “These injuries include fractures, abdominal, chest and soft tissue injuries,” Mr Mengich said.