Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has stirred fresh controversy over the deadly Mandera attack that left six Kenyans dead.
Gachagua said the killings were carried out not by al-Shabaab militants, but by armed Jubaland forces allegedly operating inside Kenyan territory.
In a sharply worded statement issued days after the ambush in Arabia Sub-County, Mandera County, Gachagua described the attack as “an act of aggression and incursion” by foreign fighters who, he said, had crossed into Kenya and entrenched themselves near the porous Somalia border.
“Two days ago we witnessed and received sad news from Northern Kenya, where we lost patriotic Kenyans in an act of aggression and incursion by Jubaland forces, who continue to be on Kenyan soil illegally,” Gachagua said.
The Saturday, May 9 attack unfolded with chilling brutality along the dusty Mandera-Arabia road, where gunmen intercepted a passenger vehicle and sprayed it with bullets, leaving bodies slumped inside the shattered matatu as survivors screamed for help.
Police reports said the victims were members of the same family travelling to a religious ceremony.
Authorities had initially linked the ambush to suspected al-Shabaab militants, the jihadist group that has repeatedly staged cross-border raids in Kenya’s northeastern counties.
But Gachagua’s remarks have injected a volatile political and diplomatic dimension into an already fragile security situation.
“I send my deepest condolences to the families of the six innocent Kenyans who were brutally killed,” he said, while also wishing the injured “a quick and full recovery”.
A warning ignored
Then came the accusation that could deepen tensions surrounding the ongoing Jubaland crisis.
“Last year, I warned about the serious security threat posed by the presence of illegal foreign Jubaland forces in the territory of the Republic of Kenya,” Gachagua declared. “This tragic incident has sadly confirmed those fears.”
The former deputy president further accused unnamed leaders of sacrificing Kenya’s territorial integrity for “cheap business and political gains” and demanded the immediate removal of all foreign armed groups from Mandera.
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His claims come against the backdrop of escalating instability in Somalia’s Jubaland region, where clashes between Jubaland forces and Somalia’s federal government have spilt dangerously close to the Kenya border.
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