At least 46 people have been killed and many others injured when cattle raiders attacked a village in northern Kenya, reports said today.
"The attack took place in a very remote zone," local official Osman Warfa told the Daily Nation newspaper.
Gunmen from the ethnic Turkana people are suspected of launching the attack yesterday against an ethnic Pokot village close to Nadome along the Turkana-East Pokot district border, an area where there are frequent deadly conflicts between the two communities.
Warfa, who is Rift Valley regional commissioner, said 46 people were killed and an unknown number of livestock stolen and that Kenya police and soldiers were hunting the attackers.
Another official, Baringo county commissioner Peter Okwanyo, said yesterday's raid followed a previous attack by Pokot warriors on a Turkana village in which 100 goats were stolen.
"These are provocative attacks," Okwanyo said, calling on security forces to "pursue and arrest the culprits to quell the heightened tension."
Retaliatory cattle raids as well as armed disputes over water and pasture are common among Kenya's northern pastoralists.
