Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 19:18:42 +0200
Somalia Shebab group grows bolder
New overnight attack kills at least 10 people near Kenya's coast, just 24
hours after Shebab rebels massacred close to 50 people in same area.
By Aymeric Vincenot - MPEKETONI
17/06/2014
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Terrorism dampens prospects for tourist season
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At least 10 people were killed in a new overnight attack near Kenya's coast,
police said Tuesday, just 24 hours after Somalia's Shebab rebels massacred
close to 50 people in the same area.
The Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group said its fighters carried out the latest
attack on a nearby village, and that the commando unit had managed to return
to base unhindered after two nights of carnage that have left close to 60
Kenyans dead.
"We carried out another attack last night. We killed 20 people, mainly
police and Kenyan wildlife wardens. The commandos have been going to several
places looking for military personnel," Shebab's military spokesman,
Abdulaziz Abu Musab, said by telephone.
"The commandos have fulfilled their duties and returned peacefully to their
base," he added, without saying if the attackers were still inside Kenya or
had driven back across the Somali border, around 100 kilometres (60 miles)
to the north.
Police confirmed the gunmen, apparently part of the same group that
massacred nearly 50 people in the town of Mpeketoni overnight Sunday,
attacked the village of Poromoko, also situated in Lamu county, late on
Monday and left 10 dead.
Kenyan police spokeswoman Zipporah Mboroki confirmed the new attack -- which
came as top officials were flying in to the area to coordinate security
operations -- and local police and a county official said so far 10 people
were confirmed dead.
"Our officers are trying to access the scene and the details are sketchy,"
Mboroki said.
Sunday night's assault on Mpeketoni, near the coastal island and popular
tourist resort of Lamu, was the worst attack on Kenyan soil since last
September's siege of the Westgate shopping mall in the capital Nairobi, in
which 67 were killed.
Witnesses described how the militants drove into the predominantly Christian
town on Sunday night, attacked a police station and then hotels and homes.
The gunmen also singled out non-Muslims for execution, sparing Muslim men as
well as women and children, eyewitnesses said.
"They arrived and asked people to get out. They asked them to lie down, and
then they shot them one by one, right in the head, one after another," said
David Waweru, who was watching a World Cup match in a cafe but managed to
hide behind a house when the Mpeketoni attack started.
Shebab said the attack was further retaliation for Kenya's military presence
in Somalia as well as the "Kenyan government's brutal oppression of Muslims
in Kenya through coercion, intimidation and extrajudicial killings of Muslim
scholars."
Kenyan troops crossed into southern Somalia in 2011 to fight the Shebab,
later joining the now 22,000-strong African Union force battling the
militants and supporting the war-torn Horn of Africa nation's
internationally-backed but fragile government.
Several fundamentalist clerics have also been murdered in Kenya's port city
of Mombasa in recent years, with rights groups accusing the Kenyan
government of carrying out extra-judicial killings.
Shebab also declared Kenya a "war zone" and warned tourists and foreigners
to stay out of the country, once a top beach and safari destination but now
facing a sharp drop in tourism revenue due to political tensions, rising
violent crime and the wave of shootings and bombings blamed on the Shebab.
"Foreigners with any regard for their safety and security should stay away
from Kenya or suffer the bitter consequences of their folly," Shebab said in
a statement on Monday.
"We hereby warn the Kenyan government and its public that as long as you
continue to invade our lands and oppress innocent Muslims, such attacks will
continue and the prospect of peace and stability in Kenya will be but a
distant mirage," the group said.
Mpeketoni was extremely tense on Tuesday, with residents fearing new attacks
despite the presence of police and paramilitary reinforcements,
correspondents said.
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