A police officer has been killed after suspected drug traffickers ambushed security personnel who were tracking them down in Isiolo’s remote Merti Sub County.
The 45 year old officer, based at a post within the sub county, was among colleagues who had been deployed on Friday afternoon to pursue suspected drug traffickers on one of the most notorious routes used by the drug dealers in the illegal trade.
One of the routes that is used to ferry the narcotics, mainly bhang from southern Ethiopia, runs down to Merti sub county in Isiolo.
The officer was taken to Merti Sub County Hospital but on arrival the medics said the officer had already died.
The area is about 120km from the hospital and the roads are in deplorable condition.
On Saturday, the sub county police Commander Rashid Juma said police received an intelligence report that suspected drug traffickers on several motor bikes were sighted in Bulesa area that prompted deployment of personnel to pursue the suspects.
The officers from Merti, Bulesa and Biliko pursued the suspects who were using beaten tracks, off the Gotu-Merti road until at Dimaade area, which lies on the western bank of Ewaso Nyiro River.
It’s here that the patrollers were caught off guard and shot at by the suspects.
Mr Juma said the officers were shot at in an ambush that led to a brief exchange of gun fire.
“It was a market day and it seemed the suspects had also been tipped (that they were being tracked down) and our officers were ambushed,” said the commander on phone.
The deceased was one of the two officers who were hit first by the ambushers. According to the official, the bullet that was fired at the second officer hit his shoe, near the sole, which failed to penetrate deeper.
“The second officer was not injured at all. The bullet only hit the sole of his shoe,” said the official.
The area is one of the routes traffickers of drugs used to evade police barriers along the Isiolo-Moyale highway.
A highly intoxicant variety of bhang dubbed ‘shashamanne’, named after the town of it’s alleged origin in southern Ethiopia are trafficked by cartels via cut-lines along the key highway and others in North Eastern’s Wajir County to reach markets in Nairobi and other parts of the country.
Reports indicate that the brand that is in high demand also finds its way to overseas markets that include Dubai and South Africa via the port of Mombasa.
Since it was noticed in 2008, several arrests had been made in many parts of the country and dozens had been charged and jailed while there are many pending court cases.
An anti-narcortic police unit was set up in Isiolo in 2019 to monitor and crackdown on the cartels along the routes used in upper Eastern.
They were joined by officers from other units who formed a multi agency team and were joined by the army during ‘special operations’. The agency team is located in strategic areas near roads leading to towns like Isiolo, Maua in Meru, Maralal in Samburu and selected centres along the northern shores of Lake Turkana in Marsabit.
An operation that started at the beginning of the year flashed out remnants of Oromo Liberation Front (,OLF). The multi-agency team recovered hundreds of kilogrammes of the narcotics and weapons from the foreigners.
