…Could There Be A Hit Squad Link To The Strange Mombasa Explosion?

Last week at the sprawling Kongowea market in Mombasa (not far from the Nyali bridge) a puzzling incident took place and this writer is still following leads to see if there is any link with some of the theories behind the increased incident of violent crime and murder in the country.

Two smartly dressed men walked into a scrap metal workshop and requested that a heavy piece of metal be sliced into two. They claimed that there was mercury inside the sealed piece of metal. What followed was horrific to say the least. No sooner had the eager jua Kali artisans started cutting through the strange metal, the object itself exploded dismembering the legs clean off the body of the person who was nearest at the time it went off. Yet another person was thrown high into the high and landed over 10 metres away. A huge hole was created on the spot by the explosion which was very loud and was heard for miles around. Residents in houses several metres away said that they felt an "earth tremor" at the time of the explosion. At least two people died as a result of this bizarre incident and others are fighting for their lives at the Coast General Hospital.

As usual security forces have remained tight-lipped but say that they are aggressively looking for the two men who brought the strange piece of metal to the yard. Judging from the description, chances are high that the piece of metal was in fact a mine. The sort of explosion a mine causes resembles the one that was described by eyewitnesses to the Kongowea incident.

But this raises other pertinent questions. Why would somebody give out a mine with such a cock and bull story that there was mercury inside, knowing full well that any effort to drill through would result in an explosion? Were they trying to eliminate somebody or were they simply conning some poor ignorant fellow out of their hard earned money?

Whatever the explanation, this incident should cause a lot of anxiety and concern to Kenyans. It clearly means that not only are automatic weapons and guns easily finding their way into the country, but now we also have dangerous explosives like mines also coming in. And all this is happening at a time when violent crime and killings have spun out of control.

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