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VIDEO on Bulla Karatasi: The Forgotten Massacre by Iqra Sahal
The year was 1980, Saturday November 8th…
The sunny mid-morning had given way to a hot, dry afternoon before heavy, soggy clouds drifted across the sky, finally yielding to a beautiful cherry-gold evening. Peace seemed to blanket the town.
The sun had just set, casting brilliant shades of crimson, amber, and gold across the limestone buildings, their walls shimmering like polished marble beneath the emerging moonlight.
As though racing the departing sun, the half-smiling moon slowly rose above the eastern horizon to reign over the night. In the distance, Garissa’s towering telecommunications mast stood against the seamless slate-grey sky, its solitary red beacon blinking rhythmically through the gathering darkness.
Then, without warning, a barrage of gunfire shattered the evening calm. At first, many people thought it was nothing more than a tyre bursting rather than gunfire.
It was around the time the soothing echoes of the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer, were drawing to a close. The voices from a dozen mosques overlapped in gentle succession, chanting, “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar…” and summoning the faithful to the fourth prayer of the day—Maghrib. As worshippers concluded their prayers, the peaceful evening was violently interrupted.
In the distance, the last flocks of birds were already winging their way to their nests. Their departure surrendered the skies to squadrons of bats and swarms of mosquitoes that emerged to rule the night.
The fading brays of donkeys, moments earlier part of the evening’s familiar soundtrack, were drowned out by the terrifying chorus of gunfire.
Oblivious to the horror that was about to unfold, residents continued with their evening routines. Some strolled leisurely through the streets, while others chatted and laughed outside their homes and shops, unaware that darkness would bring unimaginable terror. As the last traces of daylight disappeared beyond the horizon, a far darker night descended—one that would leave behind countless tears and lifelong trauma.
Suddenly, more bursts of gunfire erupted. Blue-light tracer rounds fired and more gun-fire from machine guns at the nearby military camp illuminated the darkness. Moments later, an even heavier volley erupted from the police camp. The deafening crackle of automatic weapons and thunderous explosions tore through the town, sending waves of panic in every direction.
Beyond the town, thick columns of grey smoke billowed into the night sky as fresh flames consumed village after village. Security forces had begun setting fire to thatched homes, reducing entire settlements to blazing infernos.
Beneath the choking smoke came the piercing cries of terrified children and the desperate screams of women fleeing burning homes, assault, and rape. Carrying frightened, half-asleep children in their arms, mothers stumbled through the darkness with nowhere to run, desperately seeking refuge in the town. Throughout the night they wandered, exhausted, terrified, and homeless.
Behind the rear entrance of Safari Lodge, where a group of us had taken shelter, a young woman suddenly cried out in desperation.
“Help!… Help!… Please help!”
Her voice pierced the darkness.
“Au… Oowoh! Alaa way i hogayiney! Alaa ya Muslimiin ah!”
“Oh, they are raping me! Is there no Muslim who can help me?”
She was about twenty metres from the hotel’s back entrance, near the prison compound.
A few of us inside the lodge looked at one another in disbelief. Her desperate cries continued.
“Please… someone help me! They’re raping me!”
Gathering what little courage we could, we rushed toward the rear of the lodge. Unable to reach her safely, we hurled stones into the darkness and shouted at the attackers. By what felt like a miracle, the men fled, and the young woman was finally released.
The rape of women, the targeted shooting of Somalis, and the burning of homes in the outlying villages of Bulla Karatasi on the outskirts of Garissa continued throughout the night.
The scene was unimaginably gruesome, evoking images of the Siege of Sarajevo (1992–1996). It was the night the Kenyan security forces set the beautiful town of Garissa ablaze—an atrocity that would forever be remembered as Garissa Gubay (“Black Garissa”).
By Abdullahi Irshat Sheikh,
Extract from The Garissa Diaries, a survivor of the 1980 vicious Garissa massacre
