NAIROBI -- At least nine people were killed and dozens wounded when suspected Ethiopian gunmen raided a village in northern Kenya in an apparent revenge attack, police and aid workers said on Monday.
The attack came a day after Kenyan police shot dead three alleged Ethiopian cattle rustlers who had raided a nearby border village at the weekend sparking fears of reprisals among the local community, they said.
The latest deaths and injuries came when a large gang of heavily armed men surrounded the village of Garwale close to the Kenya-Ethiopia border, opened fire on terrified residents and then stole hundreds of livestock, they said.
"Nine people were killed and many injured," said Mamo Abduba, information officer for Marsabit district. "The attackers were well organized, came in a large group, surrounded the village and started shooting indiscriminately."
"There was total confusion as villagers started fleeing to safety," he said, adding that hundreds of Garwale residents, including schoolchildren, had left their homes and that "several dozen" people had been wounded.
Among them was a young boy who was shot in the head, according to medical workers in the ill-equipped local Dukana dispensary, where most of the wounded were taken.
Kenya's Eastern Province Deputy Police Commander Gerald Oluochi confirmed the attack that he said appeared to be retaliatory and said that security personnel had been deployed to pursue the attackers and the stolen cattle.
The Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), meanwhile, said that it had evacuated three of the most critically wounded, including the five-year-old boy, for specialized treatment in Nairobi's Kenyatta National Hospital.
"Due to the capacity of our plane, we only had to carry those who had very critical injuries and left others to be attended in local clinics," KRCS's head of disaster Farid Abdulkadir said.
Villagers told local authorities that the attackers were Borana tribesmen from southern Ethiopia who have for years targeted their rivals, the Gabra, who live in Kenya's northern border districts with cattle raids, police said.
They said that the raid took place between 4:00 am (0100 GMT) and 6:00 am, but security forces arrived at the raided village several hours late.
Earlier, Oluochi said that Kenyan police had shot and killed three suspected Ethiopian raiders on Sunday after they attacked a village near Garwale a day earlier and made off with more than 600 cattle, all of which were recovered.
Incidents of cattle rustling and cross-border raids are endemic in the area and Kenyan authorities have stepped up security in the region in a bid to halt growing numbers of such attacks, but terrified villagers complain that the attacks have instead increased.
The latest attacks brings to at least 50 the number of people killed in a recent surge in violence over the past three months as pastoralist populations attempt to restock their herds decimated by a searing drought.
In a similar attack last year, hundreds of raiders believed to be from Ethiopia attacked a Kenyan village in the region, setting off deadly revenge attacks that along with the initial raid claimed at least 82 lives and sent tensions soaring.
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