According to a government official, 10 members of the Somalian al-Shabab militant group have been killed by Kenyan security forces in eastern Kenya.
After battling the gang on Wednesday in the village of Galmagalla in Garissa county, they also found improvised explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades, according to Thomas Bett, deputy county commissioner of the Bura East sub-county, on Thursday.
“The operation to flush out the Somalia militants’ group in the region was carried out by our multi-agency team, … and [it] managed to neutralize 10 Islamist group militants and recovered assault weapons,” he told the Reuters new agency.
Al-Shabab spokespeople could not be reached for comment.
Since years, the al-Qaeda affiliate has launched incursions into Kenya in an effort to persuade the nation to pull its troops out of the African Union-mandated peacekeeping force that is assisting the central government of Somalia in battling the organisation.
Although the frequency and severity of their attacks have decreased over the past few years, Al-Shabab has targeted security troops, schools, vehicles, communities, and telecommunications infrastructure in eastern Kenya.
67 people were killed in a 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi.
For more than a decade, Al-Shabab has fought to overthrow Somalia’s central government and instal its own system of governance based on a strict application of Islamic law.
When their vehicle collided with a roadside bomb in Garissa county last week, the group killed four employees of Kenya’s highway administration. On Tuesday, one person died when a convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the same region, police said in a report.
