Kenyan Police Killed In Roadside Bomb Attack Near Somali Border

Sumaira FH Published October 13, 2019 | 02:00 AM

Nairobi, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Oct, 2019 ) :A number of Kenyan police officers were killed on Saturday when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb near the Somali border, police said.

"Unfortunately we lost some officers and the vehicle they were travelling in has been severely damaged," Kenyan chief of police Hilary Mutyambai said in a statement, without giving an exact number of fatalities.

Another police source, however, who asked not to be named, said there were "about ten officers" killed and the device was suspected to have been placed by the jihadist Shebaab group.

The attack took place in the eastern Kenyan county of Garissa, bordering Somalia, which is regularly the scene of Shebaab attacks.

One June 15, at least eight police officers were killed in similar circumstances in the county of Wajir, to the north of Garissa.

The use of home-made weapons against police and army patrols in the northern and eastern border regions is relatively common.

The Al-Qaeda affiliate Shebaab 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 Shebaab 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.