Eight Kenyan police officers were killed when their vehicle was destroyed by an improvised explosive device in a suspected attack by Somali-based radical Islamist al-Shebab, police said.
The attack took place on Tuesday in Garissa County, eastern Kenya, a region bordering Somalia, where the Shebab have been waging a bloody insurgency against the fragile government in Mogadishu for over 15 years.
“We lost eight policemen in this attack,” said North East Regional Commissioner John Otieno. “We suspect” the “al-Shebab are now targeting security forces and tourist vehicles”, he added.
The Kenyan army intervened in Somalia in 2011 to fight al-Shebab. In 2012, its forces joined the African Union (AU) force in Somalia (Amisom, now Atmis), which drove al-Shebab from several of their strongholds.
Since 2011, Kenya has been the target of several deadly attacks claimed by al-Shebab, including against the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi (September 2013, 67 dead), Garissa University (April 2015, 148 dead) and the Dusit Hotel complex (January 2019, 21 dead).
Numerous other smaller-scale attacks regularly target police and civilians near the border. In Somalia, the Shebab have continued their deadly attacks despite a major offensive launched last August by pro-government forces, backed by the AU force (Atmis).