By Zadock Angira
Wednesday February 5, 2025
Chiefs and Assistant Chiefs during a past function. PHOTO/PRINT
Kenya plans to send Somali elders to Somalia to negotiate the release of four Chiefs and an Assistant Chief who were abducted by Al Shabaab militants in Elwak, Mandera County.
Officials said that was the safest way of guaranteeing their safe release from the abductors even as a joint security operation led by the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) was launched.
The elders have already identified ahead of their mission, which is seen as normal whenever such an incident occurs.“Unless they are killed, which may not happen, we have to send elders to negotiate with their counterparts in Somalia for the release of the administrators,” said an official.
The National Government Administration Officers (NGAO) officials were abducted on Monday around 7.30am along the Elwak-Wargadud-Mandera road when the militants stopped their vehicle.
The abducted officials have been identified as Hassan Kulmia (Chief Wargadud East location), Mohamed Hache (Chief Chachabole location), Adaw Mohamed (Chief Wargadud Town Location), Abdi Suraw (Chief Quramathow Location) and Ibrahim Gabow (Assistant chief Wargadud East Sub-Location).
President William Ruto is expected to tour the northern region this week where he is expected to, among other things, hold a Cabinet meeting in the neighbouring Garissa County. The president will also visit Isiolo, Marsabit, Mandera, Wajir and Garissa Counties during that period.
On December 9 last year, Al-Shabaab militants also shot dead a Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officer in Lafey, Mandera county before they hijacked a vehicle which they used to escape from the scene after the attack.
They threw away the body of the deceased as they were escaping to the neighbouring country. Police also said a passenger who was in the car, Muhumed Bashir who is a pump attendant at a local fuel station, was taken away by the gunmen but he was later found abandoned in the bushes with serious injuries.
Several other residents who reside behind the Lafey police post were also in the hospital after getting fragments by stray bullets after the incident in town.
The attack also came just two days before President Ruto visited the neighboring Wajir County for a pastoralist meeting.
In December last year, two police officers who went missing over eight years ago were finally presumed dead. Constable Kevin Ng’eno Kiprotich and his colleague Job Kiptoo Kimeli were killed and their bodies taken to Jilib in Somalia.
On September 22, 2016 at around 12.15am over 50 Al-Shabaab militants raided Hamey police camp and engaged the officers in a shootout.
The attackers also took away a police Landcruiser and reports later indicated that their bodies were paraded in Somalia before they disappeared.
For over eight years, nothing has been heard from the two, nor have their remains been found.
Under section 118A of the Evidence Act, where it is proved that a person has not been heard of for seven years by those who might be expected to have heard of him if he were alive, there shall be a rebuttable presumption that he is dead.
Several officers and NGAO officials have been attacked in the last few years in several counties in North Eastern region, including Mandera, Wajir and Garissa, which have had a series of persistent threats posed by Al Shabaab militants, who continue to maraud around the Kenya-Somalia border.