Residents of the Northern region of Mandera are under yet another peril, as massive eagles become an increasing threat to children in the area.

The eagle menace has forced women and children from the region into wearing pots and pans on their heads to protect themselves from the birds of prey, as reported by BBC on Monday, November 18.

In an interview with Bashkas Juugsodaay, a BBC correspondent based in Northern Kenya, the locals revealed that the threat began as the drought crisis worsened and that the birds had started preying on young children.

A mother and her child cover their heads with cooking pots to protect themselves from eagles posing a threat to children.

A local from Mandera narrated how one evening, she and her five children were sitting on the porch of their house when an eagle swooped down, targeting the children.

“The latest incident, which happened in Mandera actually, this woman was sitting in front of her house one evening, and an eagle landed on a tree outside the house. She curiously looked at this huge thing, hoping it would go away, and to her surprise, it pounced on her,” Bashkas reported.

 

“In fact she was with three of her five children, one of them a year and a half old, another three years old, and the other four years old. She told me the eagle was actually trying to attack the children,” he added.

The woman admitted that it took ten minutes and combined effort from the neighbors to fend off the eagle.

She revealed to BBC that it had become very scary for her to leave the house with her children or leave them by themselves for fear of the attacks.

Bashkas informed that cases of eagles attacking people had been on the rise and were subsequently reported to the police. However, the police had failed to give a clear solution to the problem.

 

Mother and child cover their heads in Mandera to protect themselves from eagles in the region.

He attributed the attacks from the eagles to the current climatic change experienced by the region. The BBC report highlighted that a majority of people from the region were pastoralists and mainly dwelled on meat.

The drought in the region has resulted in a massive decline in livestock numbers but the carcasses left behind have since been extinguished, prompting the eagles to start attacking people.