Monday, Jan. 25, 1954

No. 2

In the uplands of Kenya last week, Mau Mau bands emerged from hiding and struck hard at the noose of steel that British security forces are painfully tightening around them. Sixty terrorists poured 500 rounds of Sten-gun and rifle fire into one isolated farmstead, but a brave settler and his wife drove them off with a single rifle. Others attacked the home of 93-year-old Margaret Mallet, Kenya's oldest European woman, but were driven off by loyal Africans.

The fiercest clash came at Karatina, a village north of Nairobi. There. British police, supported by the 7th Battalion of the King's African Rifles, collided head-on with a powerful Mau Mau foray. The terrorists turned and fled, but their leader was shot in the throat. Captured alive he proved an important bag. He was Waruhiu Itote, alias "General China," the elusive desperado whose gangs have long dominated Mt. Kenya. An ex-railroad worker who was in the British army in Burma during World War II, "China"' is almost certainly the No. 2 man in the Mau Mau movement. No. 1 (and still at large): scar-faced Dedan Kimathi, who calls himself "General Russia."

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