Pastoralists in a past. Photo/the-star.co.ke
Suspected armed Pokot bandits on Tuesday shot two Kenya Police Reservists at the Laikipia Nature Conservancy.
Locals who witnessed the incident said heavily armed Pokots ambushed the reservists, shooting one in the arm and the other in his leg.
The victims were rushed to a hospital in Nyahururu.
The attackers were seen fleeing in the direction of Baringo County where they came from, the eyewitnesses said.
North and parts of west Laikipia are beset with fresh invasions by people believed to be Pokot and Samburu militias, who are attacking smallholders, resident pastoralists and ranch workers.
Laikipia North MP Mathew Lempurkel, widely blamed for the invasions, claims there is a drought. But it has been raining in the north since March.
Lempurkel has incited racial hatred against white landowners, claiming his supporters have ancestral rights to Laikipia. But majority of the victims of the attacks are Kikuyu and Turkana farmers as well as the Maasai, who are the indigenous people of Laikipia.
The death toll from the Laikipia attacks is now in the dozens, while billions of shillings in property, jobs and investment have been lost.