Garissa – Four primary school children have been killed during an attack on a police camp in north-eastern Kenya on Tuesday.
The militants also destroyed a phone mast.
The boarding school is on the road between Garissa and Dadaab and more than 100 children stay in the boarding house.
The attack occurred at Saretho area, 25 kilometers from Dadaab Refugee camp.
Residents say that when the children heard the gunshots they scattered and it is believed some got caught by stray bullets.
According to the area Deputy County Commissioner Kibet Bowen, stray bullets hit and killed the four students who were in the houses near the police camp.
Bowen said an operation is currently ongoing in the area to search for the other militants who escaped towards the Kenya-Somali border.
Police spokesman Charles Owino said that the militia was targeting the telecommunication mast before the police responded.
Owino added that the security has been mobilised in the area and are pursuing the rest of the attackers.
An eye witness said they had seen militants in the area a week ago and had reported it to the authorities but nothing was done.
No-one has claimed the attack but an eye witness told me residents saw fighters from the militant Islamist group al-Shabab in the area a week ago and reported it to the authorities.
Al-Shabab is known to attack communication masts so that people cannot contact the rest of the country.
The Al-Qaeda-linked group has in the past carried out bloody sieges against civilians in the country, such as the upmarket Westgate Mall in 2013 and Garissa University in 2015.
The uptick in tensions comes just days before the one-year anniversary of an attack at Dusit Hotel complex which left 21 people dead on January 15, 2019.
On Monday Al Shabaab launched an attack at a US military base in Lamu, killing a US soldier and two civilian contractors before five of them were shot dead in a joint operation with Kenya Defence Forces (KDF).
The attackers breached heavy security at Camp Simba at dawn but were pushed back and five jihadists killed, said army spokesman Colonel Paul Njuguna.
By admin
January 7, 2020
