June 21 (EUROPA PRESS) –
At least three people, including two police officers, were killed Tuesday afternoon by a bomb explosion near the town of Guba, located in Mandera county, near the border with Somalia, in the middle of the rebound in attacks by the Somali terrorist group Al Shabaab in this area of the African country.
The Mandera County Commissioner, Amos Mariba, has confirmed the event and has detailed that a security forces vehicle “has been hit by an antipersonnel mine.” The deceased are two policemen and an engineer, their identities have not yet been disclosed, as reported by the Kenyan newspaper ‘The Standard’.
Likewise, Mariba has pointed out that the police vehicle was escorting a bus that was going from the city of Banisa to that of Sarman, both located in the north of Mandera, while he has assured that after the explosion there was a shooting. “Our officers acted bravely against the attackers and managed to repel them,” he explained. “There was no further damage. All the passengers on the bus have been rescued and are now traveling to Mandera with a full escort,” he said.
For their part, sources from the local administration of Banisa have asserted on condition of anonymity that two policemen have been reported missing after the attack. “In addition to the two missing officers, the vehicle suffered serious damage and the bodies have been recovered,” it has settled.
The event took place two days after the death of two soldiers in an attack carried out by suspected members of Al Shabaab in Lamu county, also located near the border with Somalia, an event in which more than 20 soldiers were also injured. In addition, last week eight officers were killed by a mine blasting their vehicle in Garissa County, near the Somali border.
These incidents have raised fears of an expansion of Al Shabaab attacks in Kenya given the pressure the group is being subjected to due to increased security operations in Somalia. Al Shabaab has carried out numerous attacks in Kenya and against Kenyan soldiers deployed in Somalia as part of a regional mission to combat the group, linked to the terrorist organization Al Qaeda.
Faced with this situation, the Kenyan Defense Minister, Aden Duale, stated on Tuesday that the Government plans to modernize the weapons of the Armed Forces in order to fight against Al Shabaab and end the attacks in the region. Thus, he assured that the Army will receive armored transport vehicles with the capacity to detect improvised explosive devices throughout the areas under his command.
