Two people who included a Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) soldier were shot and injured in a clash with bandits in a village in Baringo County.
Police and locals said the attack happened on Saturday, May 25 at the stretch between Mainonin and Loruk in Baringo County.
The mid-morning incident which occurred a few metres from the Moinonin IDP camp saw about 100 armed bandits strike and drive away over 140 goats belonging to eight families in the area.
Witnesses said the gang first attacked a village and injured a woman. A police team that responded was also repulsed.
It was then they confronted a team of military soldiers on patrol and struck injuring one.
Witnesses said the group was organized and focused on their mission.
While one group engaged the security teams, another drove off with the animals.
There has been a lull in the area for the past three weeks which brought hopes of stability, police and locals said.
As part of the lull from the attacks, reports say that some of the people who had been displaced over insecurity in the area had started returning to their homes when the bandits attacked.
The injured were rushed to hospital.
In response to the attack, the KDF deployed three choppers in the area, two of which pursued the attackers while the other airlifted the injured officer.
The military gunship aircraft later fired missiles and bombs into the hideouts of the bandits.
It is not clear if there were casualties.
Locals said that the bandits had been spotted on Friday surveying the area.
They claim they reported to the police but no action was taken.
The area is among those affected by banditry amid ongoing operations.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki has been leading the operations in the area vowing to end the menace.
Kindiki said cattle rustling in Northern Kenya has over the years become an organised criminal enterprise responsible for deaths, poverty and displacement.
“Its impacts are severe. It deprives pastoral communities of their economic mainstay and aggravates the conditions of poverty in the rangelands, fuelling communal grievances and revenge attacks,” he said.
He said that to dismantle the infrastructure of cattle rustlers and facilitators, the government is sustaining the war on banditry and its perpetrators, enablers, benefactors and beneficiaries by making banditry a painful venture, ensuring recovery of stolen livestock and rewarding facilitators of recoveries.