Somalia’s al-Shabaab Threatens Attacks in Kenya Over Easter, Police Say
Somalia’s al-Shabaab militia threatened to carry out attacks on Kenyan government buildings, bus terminals and places of worship over the Easter weekend, Kenyan police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said.
“We have intelligence reports that they have threatened to strike in Kenya,” Kiraithe said today in a phone interview from Nairobi, the capital. “We have put in adequate measures to forestall an attack.”
The U.S. accuses al-Shabaab, which has been battling Somalia’s Western-backed government since 2007, of having links to al-Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for at least two attacks in Kenya in the past 13 years. In August 1998, at least 213 people died in an attack on the U.S. Embassy in downtown Nairobi. In November 2002, 13 people were killed on an assault on a hotel in the port city of Mombasa.
Two months ago, al-Shabaab said it planned to carry out attacks in Kenya in retaliation for training Somali government soldiers and allowing Ethiopian forces to use its territory to stage assaults on the rebel militia.
Police Training
Kenya’s government began training police officers three years ago as part of an agreement with the six-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development, though it hasn’t instructed any Somali government soldiers, Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua said in February. Ethiopians haven’t attacked Somalia from Kenya because “we cannot allow any country to launch attacks from our country,” he said.
In July, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for twin bomb attacks in Uganda that killed 76 people watching the soccer World Cup final at two separate venues. The group said it targeted Uganda because the country has troops serving in an African Union peacekeeping force.
Kenyan police have stepped up surveillance at potential target sites and will use security guards hired by those establishments to supplement the increased security, he said.
“A lot of Kenyans flock to the various churches this weekend,” Kiraithe said. “We want them to be aware that it is in the interests of their safety and security that we are doing all of this.”
Somalia has been mired in a civil war for two decades and hasn’t had a functioning central government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Most of southern and central Somalia has been seized by al-Shabaab, while President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed’s government controls only parts of Mogadishu, the capital, backed by AU peacekeepers.
To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Richardson in Nairobi at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin in Johannesburg at asguazzin@bloomberg.net.
More News:
- Africa ·
- Europe ·
- Middle East
Rate this Page