Tag: al Shabaab

Five men have been charged in a Kenyan court with 162 counts of terrorism following the deadly assault by militants on Garissa University College in April.

The four Kenyans and one Tanzanian conspired to commit “a terrorist act” at the university, the charge sheet alleges. The men denied the charges.

They are the first people to be charged in connection with the massacre, the BBC reports.

Al-Shabab said it carried out the attack, which killed 148 people.

The group is headquartered in Somalia, but has become increasingly active in Kenya in recent years.

The Garissa attack was the deadliest carried out by al-Shabab, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda.

Most of those who died in the raid were students and the attackers singled out Christians to be killed, while sparing Muslims.

The names of the 148 killed were all read out in a court in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, the AFP news agency reports.

Judge Daniel Ogembo remanded the accused in custody until June 11 when the court will rule on their bail application.

Al Shabaab militants attacked a village in the northeastern Kenyan county of Garissa, the ministry of interior said on Friday.

The Somalia-based al Shabaab group, which has carried out frequent attacks in Kenya in recent years to try to force Nairobi to pull its troops out of Somalia, struck a university in the same area last month, killing 148 people, Reuters says.

A ministry statement said the militants entered Yumbis village, 70 km (45 miles) north of Garissa town, but were driven back.

“Security forces on Thursday evening thwarted an attempted attack at Yumbis village,” it said.

“Security forces swiftly mobilized and engaged the militants in a gun battle. No casualties were reported.”

A police source in the area who did not wish to be named said the militants roamed Yumbis for an hour in two trucks bearing Kenyan registration plates. They hoisted their black flag on a mosque where they held prayers, before they headed out to a nearby village called Damajale.

A combined force of police and the army drove them off about three hours later, the source said.

Kenya’s tourism industry, a top foreign exchange earner, has borne the brunt of the attacks, as worried tourists cancel their bookings.

A car bomb targeting security officials killed four civilians in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Sunday, a government official said.

Al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the blast, saying it was targeting “pro-United States forces” and that it had killed a number of government soldiers.

“The suicide car bomb killed four civilians and injured several others,” Mohamed Yusuf, the spokesman for the security ministry, was quoted as saying on state-run radio.

“The intelligence forces got the information in advance and they were about to capture the car bomb. However, as they pursued, the suicide car bomb hit a civilian car.”

Residents said shooting followed the blast and they could see smoke and dust rising into the air after the explosion.

Al Shabaab is seeking to topple the Western-backed Mogadishu government and impose its own strict version of Islamic law in the country.

Sunday’s attack showed the group was still capable of carrying out raids in the capital even as it is losing territory in rural areas to African Union peace keepers who launched two major offensives in 2014.

“We were behind the attack. We targeted the forces that work for the U.S and we killed a number of them,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military operations spokesman, told Reuters.

In the past, al Shabaab has exaggerated the number of soldiers it has killed, while officials have played down losses.

Gunmen attacked a truck carrying Kenyan soldiers near the border with Somalia on Thursday, seriously wounding three of them, police said, in an assault that bore the hallmarks of Somalia’s Islamist militant group al Shabaab.

Attacks on civilians and security forces have killed well over 200 people since 2013. Concerns about security have battered Kenya’s tourism industry, including during this holiday season, Reuters says.

“The soldiers were going to fetch water from a borehole in Mangai village, Lamu East, when militia attacked them by shooting at their lorry,” Lamu County police commander, Ephantus Kiura, said.

“Three soldiers were critically injured in the incident and were airlifted to a nearby naval base where they are receiving treatment.”

The attack took place some 80 km from Lamu Island – an ancient trading port and popular tourist resort – and about 100 km from the site of attacks last June and July in which gunmen killed about 100 people.

The al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab claimed responsibility for those attacks, saying it would continue its assaults to persuade Kenya to pull its troops out of Somalia, where its forces have joined other African Union troops battling the militants.

A spokesman for the militant group could not immediately be reached.

Thursday’s attack was similar to an incident last June in which two soldiers were killed after the truck they were using to ferry food to their colleagues in Somalia was attacked after it stalled.

Eight gunmen infiltrated the main African Union (AU) base in Mogadishu on Thursday and killed three peacekeepers and a civilian contractor, the AU mission in Somalia said.

Somali militant group al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack, which lasted several hours, and said it had killed 14 peacekeepers.

Witnesses reported hearing bomb blasts and volleys of gunfire throughout the day.

“We targeted the enemies at a time they were celebrating Christmas,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military operations spokesman, told Reuters.

In the past, al Shabaab has exaggerated the number of soldiers it has killed, while officials have played down losses.

The al Qaeda-aligned militants want to topple the Western-backed Mogadishu government and describe AU troops as “Christian enemies.”

The group also wants to impose its own strict version of sharia law in the country.

The raid showed al Shabaab’s ability to carry out high-profile attacks in the capital even as it is losing territory in rural areas to AU peacekeepers who have launched two major offensives this year.

“The terrorists, some of whom were disguised in Somali National Army uniforms, breached the base camp around lunch hour and attempted to gain access to critical infrastructure, during which five of them were killed and three others captured,” the AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia, AMISOM, said in a statement.

It did not disclose the nationalities of the peacekeepers and civilian contractor killed in the attack.

A Kenyan warplane crashed in southern Somalia on Thursday, with the Kenyan military saying the crash was due to technical problems, while Somali rebels said they had shot it down with a missile.

The aircraft, which had been on a combat mission, came down in the area of the southern port city of Kismayu, where Kenyan troops are deployed as part of an African Union peacekeeping force battling the Islamist rebel group al Shabaab.

A spokesman for the Kenya Defence Force (KDF) said the pilot reported a technical problem on returning from a combat mission at about 3pm (1200 GMT) before he was forced to eject.

Al Shabaab said they had shot the plane down, however.

“We hit the Kenyan jet and downed it. It was bombing Bulaguduud town today,” the rebels’ spokesman for military operations, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, told Reuters. He said the group used a missile and that the pilot was “burnt inside.”

Kenyan planes have often flown missions over Somalia since troops marched across the border in 2011, but al Shabaab has not previously shown it could target them with missiles.

“You can’t rule out that they might have acquired a few, but it is not a capability that they have demonstrated in a clear manner,” said Mark Schroeder, Africa analyst for consultancy Stratfor.

KDF spokesman Colonel David Obonyo denied the claim. “They don’t have the capability or the means to do that,” he said. “This was a purely mechanical failure, a technical problem.”

Gunmen killed 36 workers in an attack on a quarry in Kenya’s Mandera County, which borders Somalia, the county governor said on Tuesday.

At least 28 people were killed in the area last month when al Shabaab militants hijacked a Nairobi-bound bus, causing widespread anger.

Kenya has suffered a string of gun and grenade attacks since it sent troops into Somalia to fight al Shabaab in late 2011.

“It is sad that we have another 36 people who were attacked and killed late last night in the same manner it happened on a bus recently. It happened at a quarry about 15 km (10 miles) from Mandera town,” Mandera county governor, Ali Roba, told Reuters on telephone.

A Reuters witness at the scene counted 36 bodies at the Korome quarry. All the victims had been shot in the head, except for four who had been beheaded.

The witness said the workers were attacked while sleeping in their tents at the quarry.

The Somali Islamist militant group al Shabaab said it had staged an attack in Kenya on Saturday in which gunmen ordered non-Muslims off a bus and shot 28 dead, while sparing Muslim passengers.

Three of the group led out to be killed saved their lives by reciting verses of the Koran for the militants, a local security official said.

Al Shabaab said its men had ambushed the Nairobi-bound bus outside the town of Mandera, near Kenya’s border with Somalia and Ethiopia, and killed the non-Muslims in retaliation for raids on mosques in the city of Mombasa.

On Monday, police in the port city shot dead one man and arrested almost 400 others when they raided four mosques that they said were being used to recruit militants and stash weapons.

“The Mujahideen successfully carried out an operation near Mandera early this morning, which resulted in 28 crusaders perishing, as revenge for the crimes committed by the Kenyan crusaders against our Muslim brethren in Mombasa,” Reuters quoted Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, al Shabaab’s spokesman, as saying  in a statement.

Many Islamist militants use the term “crusaders” to describe Christians or non-Muslims in general.

Police Inspector General, David Kimaiyo, said 19 men and nine women had been killed.

“Preliminary reports indicate that the attackers, who were heavily armed, later fled towards the border into Somali,” he told reporters.

A witness, who asked not to be identified, said the attackers had boarded the bus and tried to identify Muslims and non-Muslims.

Ahmed Maalim, an official at the Mandera East sub-county security force, said the attackers had ordered passengers thought to be non-Muslims out of the bus. Three were spared after reciting Koranic verses and ordered back on the bus.

“The women and men (remaining outside) were separated, then shot at close range,” he said. “None survived.”