Armed attackers struck two villages in southeast Kenya, leaving five civilians dead, according to police reports. The assault took place on Sunday in the villages of Juhudi and Salama in Lamu County, located on the border with Somalia.
Witnesses reported that the assailants also set ablaze several homes and caused significant property damage. In one horrific incident, a 60-year-old man was tied up and brutally murdered with his throat slit, following which his house was set on fire, destroying all his belongings. Three more people met a similar fate, while a fifth individual was shot dead.
According to resident Hassan Abdul, women were confined in their homes while the men were summoned outside, bound with ropes and then gruesomely killed. Among the deceased was a secondary school student, and Abdul mentioned that all victims were brutally slashed and some were even beheaded.
Ismail Hussein, another local resident, claimed that the attackers looted food supplies before retreating, discharging their weapons into the air as they departed.
Local law enforcement labelled the incident a “terrorist attack”, a term commonly employed to denote incursions by Somalia’s Islamist al-Shabab group.
The region of Lamu, close to the Somali border, is often targeted by al-Shabab militants in a bid to force Kenya to recall its troops from Somalia, where they form part of an international peacekeeping force defending the central government.
Kenya initiated its military involvement in Somalia in 2011 to combat the al-Qaeda-affiliated group, and has since been a significant contributor of troops to the African Union’s (AU) military operation against al-Shabab. This commitment, however, has come at a high price, with Kenya suffering a series of retaliatory attacks, including a 2013 siege at Nairobi’s Westgate mall that resulted in 67 deaths and a 2015 assault on Garissa University, where 148 people lost their lives.
Despite a major offensive launched in August last year by pro-government forces supported by the AU Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), al-Shabab continues to perpetrate deadly attacks in Somalia. ATMIS, with its 22,000 troops, has been assisting Somalia’s federal government in its battle against al-Shabab since 2022, taking over the responsibilities of the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).
In another recent incident, four individuals were killed in northeast Kenya, with police attributing the attack to al-Shabab. This assault transpired when a vehicle escorting a convoy of buses between the towns of Banisa and Mandera was targeted. A responding security team from Banisa also came under attack.
Moreover, on June 14, eight Kenyan police officers lost their lives when their vehicle was blown up by an improvised explosive device in a suspected al-Shabab attack.
Over the last fortnight, attacks linked to al-Shabab have claimed the lives of another ten individuals, based on police records.
