Posted on 12/15/2003 3:43:54 AM PST by Prodigal Son
NAIROBI: At least 40 people were injured in violent riots by hundreds of Muslims in a northeastern Kenyan town protesting the presence of US marines on a humanitarian mission, police and press reports said on Sunday.
“Several hundred people demonstrated on Friday against the presence of US marines, who were here to offer free medical and veterinary services,” Garissa district police chief Remmy Ngugi said. “Placard-waving protestors burnt tyres on main roads and torched American flags and an effigy of US President George Bush at a Garissa playground before accosting the marines, but we managed to bring the situation under control,” Mr Ngugi said.
Kenyan media reported on Sunday that at least 40 people, including a local government official, were injured after riot police engaged the demonstrators in running street battles, amid claims that the marines were offering free services as a pretext to pursue terrorists.
The injured were taken to Garissa Provincial Hospital where most were treated and discharged, newspapers said. Mr Ngugi said the protestors were provoked after local MP Adden Sugow told a rally in the town on Friday that Americans were not sincere in their mission in the predominantly Muslim Somali-inhabited town close to the border with Somalia.
“We don’t want American soldiers in our villages, we can only deal with them indirectly through other agencies because we believe they have a hidden agenda,” Mr Sugow was quoted as telling the rally. Mr Ngugi said Muslim leaders were “against the US marines’ humanitarian mission, despite having held a meeting with the mission commander before the operation started”.
The marines, who are part of the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa that fights terrorism from its headquarters in Djibouti, arrived in Garissa on Tuesday on a five-day humanitarian operation. —AFP
Well, consider how many would have been injured (or killed) if the Marines were on a regular mission...
The more truth threatens delusions, the more intense the resistance to it becomes.
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