Raid or aided rescue? Mystery over daring attack at Iten County Referral Hospital by bandits
Mystery is rife on the circumstances surrounding the daring dawn raid at Iten County Referral Hospital by six heavily armed young men who staged a successful attack and managed to rescue a wanted banditry suspect identified as Dennis Kemboi.
It is still unclear how the six youthful men managed to breach the two security layer laid out by ten armed police officers who were deployed to the facility from Keiyo North and Iten Police Station Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) wing following intelligence of the impending raid.
To deter the threat, four police officers went to the ward to help secure discharge of the said suspect while the other six officers were manning the main hospital gate.
Curiously, the attackers managed to breach the two security and escaped together with the guarded patient-cum-suspect without any injury either to the attackers or the security officers being reported.
According to a police OB No. 02 of 10/04/2023, at about 0045 hours on Sunday, police officers acted on information that a patient being treated of gunshot wounds at Iten County Referral Hospital was intending to escape from the said facility.
“At about 0210 hours the patient was discharged and immediately at entrance of the ward a group of 10 young men, six of them armed with AK-47 rifles, stormed the ward, smashed windows and rescued the patient from police officers.” A preliminary police investigations report reads in part.
However, the investigation report says that neither was anybody injured during alleged confrontation between the six attackers and ten police officers nor has any arrests been made so far.
Kemboi was being treated for a gunshot wound and is linked to a series of banditry attacks within the volatile Kerio Valley where hundreds of people among them police officers and civilians have been massacred in cold blood.
The armed group allegedly gained entry to the hospital by cutting through a wire mesh fence.
