This archive report was first published on 14 January 2020.
On Tuesday morning, January 14, 2020, a group of heavily armed Al-Shabaab militants stormed a school in Garissa's Kamuthe village, killing three teachers and injuring another. The attack, which occurred at around 2am, also saw the destruction of a Safaricom communication mast and the razing of four rooms at the nearby police station.
Lucy Wanjira, a teacher at the Kamuthe Resource Centre, was one of the survivors of the attack. She recounted how she clutched her one-year-old child close to her chest and hid under a bed for hours as the attackers struck. 'I could hear them speak behind my house while I was still under the bed. I prayed to God to spare my life and that of my child. All along there were gunshots and explosions everywhere,' she said.
Another teacher, Robert Kabuti, who has been teaching at the school for five years, said he was woken up by gunshots within the school compound. He peeped through the door and saw heavily armed men outside, before opening the door and dashing to a nearby bush. 'I was literally dodging bullets because they were chasing me and firing for about 100 metres into the bush,' he said.
The attack has left the education sector in the region in limbo, with the Teachers Service Commission withdrawing teachers from insecurity-prone areas. Northeastern Regional Education Director Yussuf Jilo Karayu said they have advised teachers to move to safer areas as they wait for the government to boost security.
