Eight killed in Garissa province in eastern Kenya, a region on the border with Somalia.
Eight Kenyan police officers were killed when their vehicle was destroyed by an improvised explosive device in a suspected attack by Somalia-based rebel group al-Shabab, police said.
The incident took place on Tuesday in eastern Kenya’s Garissa province, a region bordering Somalia where al-Shabab has been waging a bloody insurgency against the fragile government in Mogadishu for more than 15 years.
“We lost eight police officers in this attack,” said Northeast Regional Commissioner John Otieno. “We suspect the work of al-Shabab, who are now targeting security forces and passenger vehicles.”
The attack came just days after Ethiopia said it foiled a suicide bombing by the group in the border town of Dollo.
Al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda, has been waging an armed insurgency against Somalia’s central government for some 15 years.
Kenya first sent troops to Somalia to fight the group in 2011 and is now a major contributor to an African Union (AU) military operation against the group.
However, it has faced a series of reprisals, including a bloody siege of Nairobi’s Westgate Mall in 2013 that claimed 67 lives and an attack on Garissa University in 2015 that left 148 people dead.
In Somalia itself, al-Shabab has continued to launch deadly attacks despite a major offensive launched last August by pro-government forces backed by the AU force known as ATMIS.
ATMIS, which has 22,000 troops, has been aiding the Somali federal government in its war against al-Shabab since 2022, when it replaced the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).
On May 26, 54 Ugandan peacekeepers were killed in one of the worst recent attacks when Al-Shabab fighters stormed an AU base in Somalia, according to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
And on Saturday, Somali police said six civilians were killed during a six-hour siege by the fighters at a beachside hotel in Mogadishu.