On Saturday morning, a group of twelve relatives hired a matatu in Mandera town to take them to Arabia Township, near the Kenya–Somalia border. They were unaware of what lay ahead.
Their two-hour journey was cut short when a lone gunman emerged from the bushes and opened fire on their vehicle, instantly killing six people and seriously injuring three others.
“We had a reported incident of an ambush on a private vehicle ferrying a family to Arabia town for a religious function. Survivors told us that they were shot at by a lone gunman who emerged from the bushes,” Mandera County Police Commander Robinson Ndiwa told the Nation .
He added that the driver and three other people on board had escaped unharmed and were being searched for.
“The group had hired this vehicle to take them to Arabia for Quran recitation following a recent funeral within the same family,” he said. “We are treating this as a terror incident as we start investigations. The security situation along that road has been calm and this is an isolated incident.”
A security report by the Centre for Human Rights and Policy Studies (CHRIPS) revealed that there had been 72 terror-related attacks in 2025, marking a 15 percent decrease compared to the 85 attacks recorded in 2024.
According to CHRIPS's annual report, released on Friday, Mandera recorded the highest number of incidents in 2025, with 32, followed by Garissa County with 23, Lamu County with 13 and Wajir County recorded only four.
At least 50 people were reportedly killed in 2025, compared to 107 fatalities in 2024.
The report cited Iresuki village, areas along the Takaba–Wargadud road and the wider Mandera East and Mandera South sub-counties as the areas most affected by terrorism.
In most cases in Mandera, security personnel were the primary targets of these attacks.
“Several incidents involved assaults on police camps, military convoys, and government officials, indicating a pattern of targeting state security infrastructure and personnel,” read the report.
