MANDERA, Kenya — A suspected al-Shabaab suicide bomber was killed and eight Kenyan police officers were wounded in separate incidents near Kenya’s border with Somalia on Wednesday.
In the first incident, the militants ambushed and injured at least eight elite police officers from the Special Operations Group on Wednesday evening in Mandera County in northeastern Kenya, a police officer who declined to be named said over the phone on Thursday.
The police officer said the elite team was pursuing the gang when they were attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade.
The attackers fled the scene after the attack. The police officers were rescued to a local hospital before they were transferred to the national capital of Nairobi, the police officer said.
Earlier in the day, Kenyan troops at a camp in Sirari, Lamu Country in coastal Kenya, killed one suspected suicide bomber who had attempted to stage an attack on the facility. The suspect was found ringed with a suicide vest after he was killed, the police said.
The security team said it brought down a drone belonging to the terrorist group, which was on a surveillance mission at the camp, and minutes later, it detected a stranger trying to access the camp and confronted him with gunfire.
Kenyan security agencies have ramped up their war against al-Shabaab militants operating at the border region with Somalia. The recent attacks have forced the government to suspend plans to reopen the Kenya-Somalia border.
Kithure Kindiki, cabinet secretary for the Ministry of Interior and National Administration, said on Wednesday that the move follows an increase in terror-related attacks along the border in the past month that have claimed more than 30 lives, most of them being security officers.
“The government will delay the planned reopening of Kenya-Somalia border points until we conclusively deal with the recent spate of terror attacks and cross-border crime,” Kindiki said in Garissa County.
Source: Xinhua
