Kenyan security forces say they have shot dead 18 cattle raiders from Uganda after rustlers attacked a village in Kenya's northern district of Turkana.
Cattle is a major commodity in the region
The raiders from Uganda's Karamojong group killed a 12-year-old boy in the attack and stole the cattle he was herding, Kenyan police said.
Kenyan forces pursued the attackers and say they killed at least 18 of them in a gun battle.
The incident occurred in a region where cross-border cattle raids are frequent.
Last week, at least 76 people were killed in cattle-raids in a different part of northern Kenya.
"This fighting near the border is very common. We have had worse incidents than this before," a police spokesman said.
Cattle raiding has been a common practice for centuries among the nomadic groups of northern Kenya and Uganda, correspondents say.
But the raids have become increasingly lethal in recent decades as tribal warriors acquired modern weapons, which flooded the region following conflicts in Uganda, Sudan and Somalia, they say.