Detectives are investigating an incident in which a bar attendant was shot and wounded in a confrontation with gunmen who had posed as police officers in Gilgil, Nakuru County.
The 30-year-old attendant is nursing gunshot wounds after he was hit as he ran away from the gunmen on Saturday evening at Mbaruk Trading Centre.
He told police and hospital officials he was at his bar when seven men posing as police officers arrived there.
They then demanded to be shown licenses for the business which the attendant complied with.
The gunmen then told him they would arrest him. Not knowing the reasons for his arrest, he tried to escape from the premises.
It was then that one of the men opened fire and seriously injured him in the right upper arm.
He was shot and fell as the said men disappeared. Locals rushed him to St Joseph Mission Hospital where he was admitted in stable condition.
Police visited the hospital and the scene of the shooting as part of the probe into the attack.
No arrest has been made but a team is pursuing the matter, police said.
Police said they want to establish the identity of the gunmen as part of the probe into the incident.
Elsewhere in Merti, Isiolo, a 50-year-old man was shot and seriously wounded in a robbery of livestock.
Gunmen raided Dadacha-anan area and opened fire at herders before driving off with 33 cows towards Samburu direction.
During the attack a herder namely Mamo aged 50 suffered a gunshot injury on his right thigh.
He was rushed to hospital in serious condition as police responded to the scene.
The area is among those under multi-agency operations over persistent gun attacks by bandits.
The other areas include Turkana, Meru, Marsabit, West Pokot, Baringo, Elgeyo Marakwet and Samburu.
The attacks have negatively impacted development at large.
The government has rolled out various projects to help in growing the area.
InteriorCabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki said cattle rustling in Northern Kenya over the years has 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,” Kindiki said.
To dismantle the infrastructure of cattle rustlers and facilitators, Kindiki said the government is sustaining the war on banditry and its perpetrators, enablers, benefactors and beneficiaries.
This, Kindiki said, is being done by making banditry a painful venture, ensuring recovery of stolen livestock and rewarding facilitators of recoveries.