Tension simmered in Kenya’s Northwestern Kalobeyei Refugee Camp as a fight between two foreign communities left people scampering for their lives following the death of a local who was reportedly stabbed and killed.
The tensions are reported to have gone overboard when a student, of South Sudanese descent, was attacked and killed by unknown assailants while going home after watching a football match.
The residents, as a result, noted that they were living in fear, forcing them to flee following the deteriorating security situation within the camp after unknown assailants attacked the camp.
The situation rendered the region gripped under tension over the fear of a possible ethnic clash pitting the two communities from the neighboring South Sudan nation who are hosted in the camp. The communities are Nuer and Equatoria.
A photo of the Kakuma Refugee Camp
Photo
UN Women
Confirming the incident, Equatoria community representative John Ongoro revealed that the 21-year-old student was returning home after watching the soccer match when he was attacked, robbed of his phone, and fatally stabbed.
Ongoro confirmed that the Equatoria community within the region had also already started leaving their homes following the incident, fearing a retaliatory attack.
The student is revealed to have met the fatal ordeal when two men confronted and attacked him, according to information that he gave shortly before succumbing to his injuries.
“The victim said before he died that his attackers were two tall men,” Ongoro added.
However, a Nuer Community representative Mattie Gatwick told the media that his community was falsely targeted, maintaining that the incident involving the student was far from the issues surrounding the conflict between the two communities.
He added that they needed dialogue to find solutions to the tensions
“The incident happened when a boy who was returning from a cinema theater was robbed and stabbed to death by two criminals. No one knew the identity of the attackers and there were a number of ethnic groups in this camp. People should not say that the Nuer killed their son. We urge dialogue with the Equatorians because we do not have any problem with them,” Gattwick urged.
The incident could cripple the security situation in the camp even as Kenyans chose to flee in fear of being caught up in the melee.
The Daadab Refugee Camp in Kenya
Photo
UNHCR
