The incident took place on Tuesday in Garissa county in eastern Kenya, a region on the border with Somalia, where al-Shabaab has been waging a bloody insurgency against the fragile government in Mogadishu for more than 15 years.
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“We lost eight police officers in this attack,” North Eastern Regional Commissioner John Otieno said. “We suspect the work of al-Shabaab who are now targeting security forces and passenger vehicles.”
Kenya first sent troops into Somalia in 2011 to combat the al-Qaeda-affiliated extremist militants and is now a major contributor of troops to an African Union military operation against the group.
But it has suffered a string of retaliatory assaults, including a bloody siege at the Westgate mall in Nairobi in 2013 that cost 67 lives and an attack on Garissa University in 2015 that killed 148 people.
In Somalia itself, al-Shabaab has continued to wage deadly attacks despite a major offensive launched last August by pro-government forces, backed by the AU force known as ATMIS.
In one of the worst recent attacks, 54 Ugandan peacekeepers were killed when al-Shabaab fighters stormed an African Union base in Somalia on May 26, according to Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.
And on Saturday, Somali police said six civilians were killed in a six-hour siege by the militants at a beachside hotel in Mogadishu.
However, it has suffered a string of retaliatory assaults, including a bloody siege at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013 that cost 67 lives and an attack on Garissa University in 2015 that killed 148 people.
In Somalia itself, al-Shabab has continued to wage 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 assisting Somalia’s federal government in its war against al-Shabab since 2022 when it replaced the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).
In one of the worst recent attacks, 54 Ugandan peacekeepers were killed when al-Shabab fighters stormed an AU base in Somalia on May 26, according to Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.
