Hundreds camp at Mandera airstrip over terror threat
What you need to know:
Many of the refugees spent Monday night at the airstrip saying they fear being attacked in their homes.
Hundreds of people working in Mandera have fled their homes and are camping at the town's Kenya Defence Forces-controlled airstrip demanding passage out of the county.
This comes days after the massacre of 28 non-Muslim bus passengers by Al Shabaab militants from Somalia less than ten kilometres from the county’s capital, also called Mandera.
Many of the refugees spent Monday night at the airstrip, sited next to a military camp, saying they fear being attacked in their homes in the border town.
“We feel safer here than at the AP (Administration Police) camp,” one of the workers said when the deputy County Commissioner, Mr Elvis Korir, tried to persuade them to move to the facility about a kilometre away.
The teachers, health workers, construction workers and other civil servants said they feared for their lives following reports that Al-Shabaab sympathisers had marked their houses to help in a possible attack.
All public service vehicles and the three weekly flights out of Mandera are fully booked. Bookings to the town, however, are down with numerous cancellations since the terror attack happened.
