Shebab Claim Deadly Kenya-Somalia Border Attack
Gunmen have killed five people including two police officers in an attack along Kenya's volatile border with war-torn Somalia, with Islamist insurgents making a rare claim of responsibility.
Somalia's Islamist Shebab insurgents said they carried out the attack, in which gunmen fired on a police post near the border town of Liboi late Saturday, killing two police officers and three civilians.
"A small unit of mujahedeen raided the Kenyan base," the Shebab said in a message on Twitter, one of the first times they have confirmed that they had launched raids inside Kenya.
They said they had kidnapped two Kenyans and seized guns during the attack, but the claims could not be verified.
"We lost five people during an attack in Liboi," regional police chief Charlton Mureithi told AFP on Sunday.
"We have mobilized a major security operation and boosted security at the border."
Kenya has been hit by a wave of grenade and gun attacks since its army invaded Somalia in 2011 to attack the Al-Qaida-linked Shebab, who vowed revenge.
However, while the police regularly blame attacks on members or sympathizers of the Shebab, the extremists have in the past usually kept quiet after attacks, although they have previously broadcast videos of kidnapped Kenyan soldiers and civil servants.
Kenyan troops remain in southern Somalia but have since been integrated into an African Union force.
However, they are working closely with a local Somali militia commander, whose control over southern Somalia's Jubaland area is fiercely opposed by rival Somali forces as well as the central government in Mogadishu.
Source: Agence France Presse
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