Thursday June 15, 2023
Kenya first sent troops into Somalia in 2011 to combat al-Shabab and is now a major contributor of troops to an African Union military operation against the group [File: Njeri Mwangi/Reuters]
Eight Kenyan police officers were killed when their vehicle was destroyed by an improvised explosive device in a suspected attack by Somalia-based rebel group al-Shabab, police said.
The incident took place on Tuesday in Garissa county in eastern Kenya, a region on the border with Somalia, where al-Shabab has been waging a bloody rebellion against the fragile government in Mogadishu for more than 15 years.
“We lost eight police officers in this attack,” North Eastern Regional Commissioner John Otieno said. “We suspect the work of al-Shabab who are now targeting security forces and passenger vehicles.”
The attack came only days after Ethiopia said it foiled a suicide attack by the group in the border town of Dollo.
Al-Shabab, which has been linked to al-Qaeda, has been waging an armed rebellion against Somalia’s central government for about 15 years.
Kenya first sent troops into Somalia in 2011 to combat the group and is now a major contributor of troops to an African Union (AU) military operation against the group.
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.
And on Saturday, Somali police said six civilians were killed in a six-hour siege by the fighters at a beachside hotel in Mogadishu.