29 die in attacks on Kenyan coast areas
Print Edition
GUNMEN killed at least 29 people in raids on two coastal areas of Kenya, the interior ministry said yesterday.
The Somali Islamist militant group al-Shabaab, which attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi last September, said it had staged an attack on Saturday evening in the coastal area.
Nine people lost their lives at the Hindi trading center in Lamu county, near the scene of attacks in which 65 people were killed last month, Mwenda Njoka, the ministry’s spokesman said.
Another 20 people were killed in another attack in the Gamba area of neighboring Tana River county. Both counties are situated north of the port of Mombasa.
“There were two attacks in Lamu and Tana River last night. In Lamu we have nine people dead and in Tana River we have 20. The number could rise,” he said.
Officials said a group of 10-15 men struck at Hindi, situated 15 kilometers from the town of Lamu, and close to the town of Mpeketoni, which was nearly destroyed in one of the attacks in June, at about 10pm on Saturday.
“They went around shooting at people and villages indiscriminately,” Abdallah Shahasi, the area chief, said.
Al-Shabaab said it had broken into the police station at Gamba and freed suspects from the detention cells. A Kenyan police source corroborated that account.
“They killed some of our colleagues and freed Muslim detainees. Some of those freed were linked to the Mpeketoni attacks two weeks ago. We still don’t know how many detainees were freed until we verify with registers at the station,” the police source, who asked not to be named, said.
In a separate incident, a Russian tourist was shot dead while touring a historical site in Mombasa yesterday, which the police blamed on common “thuggery” — explaining the woman had resisted an attempt to steal her camera.
“It is unfortunate the lady who was shot has succumbed to injuries,” deputy divisional police chief Tom Okoth said.
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