Gunmen raided a village in Kainuk, Turkana County and shot dead two people in a botched robbery mission.
This is the latest such fatal raid in the region amid planned operations by security agencies.
Police said the raid happened on Monday, February 5 evening in the Kakong sublocation Nakwarimor area where a gang tried to steal livestock from herders.
Residents had called police to the scene after noticing the gunmen which prompted a shootout.
A joint security team responded and an exchange of fire ensued and managed to repulse the bandits through a local conservancy.
Police later found the body of a rider who was near the scene with a bullet wound in the head.
The gang had also killed a man who was with his family burning firewood in the area.
They, however, spared the other family members, police said.
The bodies were taken to Lodwar County Referral Hospital mortuary for autopsy.
No livestock were stolen during the incident, police said as they announced a major operation had been mounted there to hunt down the gang.
The area has been facing persistent attacks by gunmen targeting livestock. In January alone, up to 20 people were killed in separate attacks in the region, police say.
The incidents have sparked tension and fears in the area forcing locals to flee.
The area is among those still under curfew amid ongoing operations.
But gunmen defy the curfew and stage attacks for livestock.
Officials say they look emboldened and ready for confrontation.
For instance, on January 5, at least three people were shot dead by bandits while on a mission to receive four stolen goats at Kerio River in Marakwet County.
Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki has been leading the operations in the area vowing to end the menace.
Kindiki said cattle rustling in Northern Kenya has over the years become an organised criminal enterprise responsible for deaths, destitution and displacement.
“Its impacts are severe. It deprives pastoral communities of their economic mainstay and aggravates the conditions of poverty in the rangelands, fuelling communal grievances and revenge attacks,” he said.
He said on February 1 incessant security threats posed by livestock rustlers, highway robbers, and traffickers of humans and narcotics require a comprehensive multi-agency eradication strategy.
“The criminals have taken advantage of rough terrain, poor infrastructure and social vulnerabilities to stage attacks against residents of some parts of Northern Rift Valley and Upper Eastern Regions, a culture that the Government is determined to suppress this year.”
The CS held a strategy event with senior security managers at Shaba, Isiolo County, to lay the framework for the pacification of disturbed areas in Marsabit, Isiolo, Meru North, Baringo, Samburu and Turkana.
He added that to dismantle the infrastructure of cattle rustlers and facilitators he said, the government is sustaining the war on banditry and its perpetrators, enablers, benefactors and beneficiaries by making banditry a painful venture, ensuring recovery of stolen livestock and rewarding facilitators of recoveries.
He said going forward, the government through the Interior Ministry will run a program to financially reward gallant officers and members of the public whose efforts will result in the arrest of the key planners, executors and enablers of banditry whose profiles will be published countrywide in the new year.
BY CYRUS OMBATI