In Kenya: Bloodshed

Before dawn one day last week, a detachment of Kenya cops, supported by armored cars, marched into Pumwani, a filth-strewn warren where a large part of Nairobi's 60-odd thousand Kikuyu somehow find space to live. Dragged from their mud huts, 20,000 Kukes were herded into compounds; 2,500 suspected Mau Mau terrorists were culled from among them and clapped into jail. Next day there were more arrests; another 3,500 "suspects" were seized near Thika.

The mass arrests were intended to forestall a rumored Mau Mau massacre, which Kenyans grimly referred to as "the Night of Long Knives." But the long knives were already whetted, and would not be stayed.. The Mau Mau took its revenge for the mass arrests, not on the hated white man but on sleeping Kikuyu whose only offense was a desire to live in peace.

The people of Chief Luka of Lari had banded together in an African Home Guard to keep out the Mau Mau. They were asleep in their huts as the silent Mau Mau warriors moved in for the kill. The first wave of attackers barred each hut door, the next, carrying torches, set fire to the grass roofs. Then, as the terrified villagers came stumbling out of the blaze, the executioners went to work with long sharp knives.

Death in the Night. For three hours the orgy lasted, and by the time help arrived, more than 300 were dead. Mothers were forced to watch as their children were decapitated by repeated blows of an ax. One woman saw the murderers slash her son's throat and drink his blood as he died. Among the charred remains, left for vulture and stork, police found bones so horribly mutilated that it was often impossible to tell which belonged to animals and which to men. All that was left of Chief Luka was his feet.

"I am horrified," said Sir Evelyn Baring, Governor of Kenya, and vowed to seek out the murderers. Suspect No. 1 was scarfaced Dedam Kimathi, 30, the ex-schoolteacher who styles himself "General Russia" (TIME, Feb. 23). Kimathi's tactics, the police believe, are copied from those of Malaya's Communist guerrillas. His forces are growing as tens of thousands of Kukes, evicted by white farmers in the Rift Valley Highlands, pour into the overcrowded reserves.

Night after the massacre, a squad of Kimathi's men stormed a police outpost near Naivasha. Three cops were killed, and the Mau Mau set free 173 imprisoned suspects. They disappeared into the forest with 50 rifles, 25 submachine guns, and 9,000 rounds of ammunition.

Malaya-Type War. With modern weapons, Kimathi's guerrillas could transform what began eight months ago as a minor "colonial incident" into a bloody colonial war. The British know it. This week they began airlifting two battalions of regulars from Britain to fight the Mau Mau. This would bring the total British force engaged in Kenya to 5,500 white regulars, some 4,000 King's African Riflemen, and every able-bodied white man in the Crown Colony, The regulars would be trained, said the Kenya government, for "Malaya-type jungle warfare."

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