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Joseph Ole Lenku

NAIROBI/BUJUMBURA. — Gunmen stormed a Kenyan police compound in a town on the border with Somalia and sprayed bullets into officers’ homes yesterday, killing two before setting more than 10 vehicles on fire, police said.
The attack was claimed by the al-Shebaab, five days after operatives from the Somali group stormed a mall in Nairobi and held a four-day siege that left dozens dead in the worst attack on Kenya in 15 years.
“They were very brutal, they were out to kill because they were shooting directly into the houses,” a police officer based in the region said of the attack in the town of Mandera.

“Two police officers were killed” and at least three wounded.
“We are pursuing them, there is a security operation that is going on after that attack that has left a lot of destruction,” the area’s police chief Charlton Mureithi said.

He said the attackers struck in the middle of the night when the police officers were asleep.
In a separate incident on Tuesday night, attackers also killed one person and wounded four when they hurled a grenade at a market in the town of Wajir, further south, a local police officer said.

“Mujahideen forces last night raided a Kenyan police base in Mandera town . . . killing two and injuring 3 others,” the Shebab said on Twitter.

“The Mujahideen burnt down police vehicles before leaving and made away with weapons and ammunition as Ghaneema (Arabic for loot or booty),” the message said.

Such attacks against the police and other targets are frequent along Kenya’s porous border with Somalia, a region rife with banditry where unrest is routinely blamed on — and claimed by — the Shebab.

Kenya’s Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said security at Kenya’s borders had been heightened after the mall bloodbath.
Meanwhile, Burundi said yesterday it had beefed up security after the al-Shebaab’s deadly Nairobi mall attack amid fears the extremists would now strike Bujumbura over its involvement in Somalia.

“Since the attack in Nairobi and the subsequent rumours of an impending attack in Burundi, the police has implemented a series of measures to be ready for any scenario,” deputy police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye told AFP.

Kenyan troops have since recaptured the main southern city of Kismayo, which was controlled by the al-Shebaab for four years, and joined the African Union’s AMISOM force.

The three main contributors to the UN and European-funded force, which has 17 700 troops in Somalia and has taken a more aggressive approach towards the al-Shebaab in recent months, are Uganda, Kenya and Burundi.

Uganda was hit in 2010 when al-Shebaab attacks killed at least 76, Kenya was struck on Saturday and now many Burundians fear their country’s turn has come.

“We are sure that after Kenya, Burundi is next on the list. We’re the next target,” said a civil servant in his sixties who gave his name as Patrice.

“They are going to punish all those countries who joined the fighting in Somalia. We are the only ones who have been spared,” said a young man on the street who refused to give his name.

“They managed to perpetrate this attack Saturday . . . in a country that is much better prepared for terrorist attacks,” said Alain, a Bujumbura banker. “In Bujumbura’s official buildings, hospitals and markets, security is like Swiss cheese.”

The police spokesman said house-to-house searches had been being carried out in the Swahili neighbourhoods of Bujumbura, with hundreds of undocumented people arrested and drugs and weapons seized.

Al-Shebaab has repeatedly threatened reprisal attacks against Burundi, which has no borders with Somalia. — AFP.