A file photo of an injured Kenyan police officer being helped by his colleagues after they were ambushed by Somalia’s al-Shabaab fighters near the Kenya-Somalia border
NAIROBI, Oct 14 (NNN-AGENCIES) — At least ten Kenyan police were killed when their vehicle struck a homemade bomb near the border with Somalia on Saturday, authorities said.
Police believe the device, for which no one immediately claimed responsibility, was planted by Islamist group Al Shabaab, the report said.
“Unfortunately we lost some officers and the vehicle they were travelling in has been severely damaged,” said the Kenyan chief of police, Hilary Mutyambai, without giving an exact number of fatalities.
Another police source who asked not to be named, said there were “about 10 officers” killed and the device was suspected to have been placed by the jihadist group al-Shabaab group.
The attack took place in the eastern Kenyan county of Garissa, bordering Somalia, which is regularly the scene of al-Shabaab attacks.
One June 15 at least eight police were killed in similar circumstances in the county of Wajir, to the north of Garissa.
The use of homemade weapons against police and army patrols in the northern and eastern border regions is relatively common.
Al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al-Qaida, has been fighting for more than a decade to overthrow successive internationally backed governments in Mogadishu.
A regional peacekeeping force in Somalia, Amisom, which chased al-Shabaab out of Mogadishu in 2011, includes troops from a number of African nations including Kenya, making police and troops from the country a target for the Islamist group. — NNN-AGENCIES
