Kenyan police fired tear gas, water cannon, and live ammunition on Tuesday to disperse hundreds of protesters in the central town of Nanyuki. Witnesses and protest organizers confirmed to Reuters and the BBC that at least one demonstrator was shot dead during running battles with anti-riot security forces.
The unrest erupted as local residents marched against the rapid construction of a U.S.-backed Ebola quarantine facility situated inside the Laikipia Air Base. The proposed 50-bed unit is designed to host American citizens who have been exposed to the Ebola virus in Central and East Africa but remain asymptomatic. The Donald Trump administration has explicitly mandated that it will not permit any exposed cases to enter the United States directly, leading angry demonstrators to accuse Washington of offloading toxic public health risks onto a nation that has never recorded a single case of Ebola.
The administrative showdown has intensified as U.S. military planes continue to ferry in equipment and personnel despite an active Kenyan court order instructing a halt to all development work at the airbase. Highlighting the defiance of the judicial injunction, satellite imagery reviewed by journalists showed a rapid expansion of white tents inside an 11-acre plot cleared within the military zone since late May.
President William Ruto’s administration has aggressively rebuffed local public health concerns, asserting that Kenya must accommodate the request out of diplomatic obligation for years of historical American financial and security aid. Local police commanders officially banned the street march on Monday evening citing property damage from prior rallies, but demonstrators defied the order by lighting street bonfires and parading mock coffins before being forcefully intercepted by armored police units.
