POLICE RAID IN KENYA

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27096, 20 July 1953, Page 9

POLICE RAID IN KENYA

Native Settlement Searched

(Rec. 10 p.m.) NAIROBI, July 18. More than 1200 troops and police, assisted by European, Asian and African home guards, swept into Nairobi before dawn today in an attempt to smash the murder wave which has swept the capital of Kenya in the last month. Troops from the Nairobi Military Garrison—clerks, orderlies, Ordnance, and Army Service Corps men—manned checkpoints on the outskirts of the city and threw a cordon around the African location of Pumwani where 18,000 Africans live less than two miles from the city’s centre, and where European ana African police today carried out a house to house search for arms and gunmen. The operation was launched in a determined bid to rid the city of what the police and the Commissioner, Mr Michael O’Rorke, described today as “a wave of assassinations which has been causing *us grave concern.” In the last week alone gunmen have shot 11 Africans in African locations and Nairobi streets. Five hours after the security forces moved in on Pumwani, more than 2000 Africans had been detained and screened by special African teams brought to the city from the Kikuyu and Embu tribal reserves. More than 1800 were released immediately after the screening but 90 men and 40 women were detained as suspects for further interrogation. By mid-morning the police announced that they had arrested 27 known criminals, “some wanted for very serious crimes.” The operation is expected to last for some days.