Al-Shabaab in 2-hour Lamu village lecture

TENSION is high in Basuba village, Lamu East, after over 80 Al- Shabaab fighters entered the area on Saturday.
The militants, among them four whites – two men and two women – entered the village at around 5am, assembled the villagers in a central place and lectured them for more than two hours.
The fighters had their faces covered and wore jungle green camouflage uniforms and were heavily armed.
According to a village elder who spoke to the Star on condition of anonymity, the fighters warned the villagers not to board any military or police vehicles in the region since the Shabaab were targeting them and that whoever disobeyed would be doing so at their own peril since they will die with the officers.
“A group were speaking to us while another one kept vigil around the village. Among those speaking to us were two white men and two white women,” the elder said.
The villagers were also warned against tipping off the police, or giving out any information concerning the fighters to the military, failing which they would be burned alive.
“They said they plan to kill and finish all of [the military and police] in this region. There is no vehicle plying this region, so whenever we want to go to Lamu or anywhere outside Basuba, only the military vehicles are available to give us lifts. Now we don’t know what to do. They said they will continue to plant landmines and it’s up to us if we chose to die with the soldiers,” said the elder.
The elder said the fighters warned that anybody who tries to give out information concerning them, even in secrecy, will be found out, hunted down “and killed alongside his family”.
The Fighters assured the villagers that they had no bad intentions towards them and had no plans to harm any of them.
The fighters are said to have promised the villagers that they would be seeing them more often and they are safe as long as they work with them.
They are then said to have vanished into the dense Boni Forest.