Al-Shabaab claims responsibility for Mandara killings
Somalia’s al-Shabaab Islamist group said on Tuesday it was behind a gun attack in the northeastern Kenyan town of Mandera, a raid it said was part of its campaign against Kenya.
“We are behind the Mandera attack. We killed over 10 Kenyan Christians,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, the group’s military operations spokesman, told newsmen. “This is part of our ongoing operations against Kenya.”
Suspected Islamic militants raided a northern Kenyan town on the border with war-torn Somalia killing at least 14 people, officials said.
Although there was hitherto no immediate claim of responsibility but Kenyan officials blamed Somali-led Shabaab militants who have carried out a string of attacks in the region, highlighting the insecurity that plagues parts of the country.
The Tuesday morning raid comes a little more than two weeks before US President Barack Obama is due to make his first visit to Kenya, where his father was born, since taking office.
The attack occurred at an area called Soko Mbuzi, a livestock market just outside the town of Mandera in Kenya’s far north-eastern region, bordering Somalia and Ethiopia.
“People were sleeping when the attack happened, they just came and hurled explosives in the houses,” said Mandera County Commissioner Alex Ole Nkoyo, confirming 14 people had been killed in the attack in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
“These were al-Shabaab from the nature of the attack. They used explosives and guns,” he said.
Meanwhile, Nkoyo said those attacked mainly worked in a nearby quarry.
Kenya police chief Joseph Boinnet also blamed Shabaab for the attack. “I can confirm a Shabaab attack in Mandera early this morning,” he said on Twitter.
Kenya Red Cross said it had taken 11 wounded to hospital, and had sent a medical aeroplane to evacuate the critically injured to the capital Nairobi.
Under pressure in Somalia where it has for years been fighting to overthrow the Western-backed government, the al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab is now increasingly targeting Kenya.
The Islamic militants have stepped up their attacks during Islam’s holy fasting month of Ramadan.
In the group’s deadliest attack to date, four gunmen killed 148 people, mostly students, at a university in the Kenyan town of Garissa in early April.
