NAIROBI: Kenya’s national police force reported on Thursday that 20 militants had been killed while eight officers sustained injuries in a suspected attack by Al-Shabaab militants near Kenya’s border with Somalia.
The incident occurred when a special unit of police officers was ambushed on Wednesday while conducting a patrol in Mandera, a county in northern Kenya that shares a significant border with Somalia.
According to a statement released by the national police service on Twitter, the exchange of fire resulted in the “fatal injury of 20 militants” and injuries to eight officers. The police also seized various weapons from the scene, including a heavy machine gun and rocket launchers, as evidenced by accompanying photographs.
Kenya Plans Reopening Border with Somalia
In response to recent deadly attacks within its territory, which have been attributed to the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists, the Kenyan government announced on Wednesday that the planned reopening of its long-closed border with Somalia would be postponed. Earlier in June, eight police officers of Kenya were killed in Garissa, an eastern county along the Somalia border, when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device.
On June 24, five civilians were brutally attacked in Lamu, another county along the border, with some individuals being beheaded. Kenya has faced retaliatory attacks from Al-Shabaab since deploying troops across the border into Somalia in 2011 to combat the jihadists who have been seeking to overthrow the foreign-backed government in Mogadishu since 2007.
Kenya continues to play a significant role in an African Union force stationed in Somalia, aiming to curb the capacity of Al-Shabaab to carry out deadly assaults. Notably, Kenya witnessed the massacre of 148 individuals at Garissa University in 2015, while two years prior, 67 people were killed when militants stormed the Westgate mall in Nairobi.
