Mombasa — Kenya police on Saturday arrested at least 60 militia suspected to be behind the previous day's massacre that left over 40 people killed in the coastal town of Tana Delta.

Regional deputy police boss Robert Kitur said the police seized firearms and crude weapons from the militia from the Pokomo community.

"We had a successful operation and managed to arrest the perpetrators of the heinous attack and recovered assorted weapons at Ngao area," Kitur told Xinhua on phone.

More than 40 people, most of them women and children, were massacred in a dawn raid in Kipao village inhabited by the pastoralist community of Orma.

According to police, the fighting started at 5:30 a.m. local time, when about 200 raiders armed with guns, bows and arrows and spears and machetes descending on the village.

A total of 13 children, six women and 11 men from the pastoralist community of Orma were killed in the dawn ambush, nine militia from the Pokomo were also cornered and hacked to death.

General Service Unit Assistant Commandant Antony Kamitu leading the operation said calm has returned in the area.

"We have deployed adequate police officers from the paramilitary unit, regular and administration unit to pursue the raiders," he told Xinhua on phone.

The Kenya Red Cross Society said the injuries mostly women and children were recorded in the attack.

Xinhua