Mandera-Kenya-(PP)-For more than 20 years, 46-year-old Shukri Farah has worked as a driver of buses plying the Mandera-Nairobi route. He, however, says Monday’s events will forever remain etched in his mind. He was transporting more than 60 passengers from Nairobi on a journey that started at 11.00 am.
They were in a bus labelled Makkah, and he recalls how the passengers were engaged in animated conversation, as is typical of long-distance drivers.
“When you are travelling for many hours on rough terrain like the one we use, you feel the urge to talk to each other because you have nothing else to do.
We were like a small family really,” said Farah, popularly known as Abdi. However, their journey was suddenly interrupted when three men sprang from a bush just a few kilometres from Mandera town. The men were wearing military fatigues and their faces were completely covered in black scarves.
The driver said for a moment, he thought they were police officers, thus he slowed down and halted near one of the men who was waving frantically at him.
“Get out and tell everyone to disembark,” the man ordered.
It is at that point that it dawned on him that the men were not security officers but members of the outlawed Al-Shabaab militia. “I did not move. Instead, I kept the door locked and tried to speed off,” he said.
Puntlandpost.com