A police officer attached to the General Service Unit (GSU) is nursing gunshot wounds after he was attacked together with his colleagues during an arrest operation.
The officer, identified as Edwin Maina, was critically injured in the Sunday, August 1 incident in the Lokori area of Turkana County.
According to a report entered in the police Occurrence Book (OB) at the Lokori Police Station, officer Maina and his colleague had gone to effect an arrest warrant in the outskirts of Lokori township where the suspect accused of assault lived.
Joseph Ewalan, 28, was being sought by the police over a pending assault case. The police report indicates that Ewalan's accomplice, identified as Kan'gasaricho Loseny, 35, lured the two police officers into a trap before opening fire at them.
The suspect and his accomplice later vanished in the nearby thicket prompting the base commander to authorize an operation to flush them out.
"Police Constables (PC) Samuel Waweru and Edwin Maina went to arrest a suspect of an assault case namely Joseph Ewalan within the outskirts of Lokori township when they were attacked by an accomplice namely Kan'gasaricho Loseny. The suspect shot PC Maina on the right hand in anticipation to aid the escape of the arrested suspect," reads the police report.
"They vanished into the nearby thicket immediately after the incident."
A reinforcement team drawn from Lokori Police Station and a nearby GSU camp was sent to comb the area and flush out the two fugitives.
"The area is still being combed by the joint security team with an aim of arresting the suspects and recovering the illegal firearm," adds the report.
The injured police officer was rushed to Catholic Mission Hospital in Lokori where he is recuperating.
Lokori is a notorious hotspot for banditry and a famous corridor for cattle rustlers.
The attack on the police officers comes even as the government heightens operations to confiscate guns illegally held by herders in the volatile part of the country.
