Early on Friday, two police officers reportedly lost their lives after the government vehicle they were travelling in ran over a suspected improvised explosive device along the Saretho-Dadaab road in Garissa County.
According to reports, the two were the Hagadera Sub-County Police Commander and his driver. They were in a Land Cruiser when the blast went off. Authorities have confirmed the deaths, and investigators are at the scene trying to establish how the device was planted and who is responsible. A security operation has also been launched in the area.
What remains unclear is how badly the vehicle was damaged and whether anyone else was inside at the time. Those details had not been confirmed when the first reports came out, so families and members of the public should wait for official updates from the police.
Garissa is one of the counties near the Somalia border that has faced repeated attacks over the years. Friday's killings come after a difficult few months for security forces in the northeast. In August, six people were injured when a Land Cruiser struck a roadside bomb near Odole Village in Elwak, Mandera County, in an attack suspected to have been carried out by Al-Shabaab. One of the injured was reported to be in critical condition. The very next day, a 35-year-old man lost an arm after a suspected explosive device went off in his hands in Mandera Town.
Security reports at the time had recorded at least 25 cross-border attacks in Mandera, Garissa, Wajir and Lamu counties that year. Last month, five people, including two police officers, were reportedly killed in a suspected bandit attack in Gotu, Isiolo County.
There have been growing calls for more patrols and better intelligence work to stop these attacks, especially along roads that officers use every day. Each time an officer dies on the job, the loss is felt by their family, their colleagues and the community they serve. For now, we wait for the police to release more details, and we keep the families of the fallen officers in our thoughts.
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