Ekip
11 June 2017•Update: 12 June 2017
By Andrew Wasike
NAIROBI, Kenya
Police in Kenya on Sunday said that they had foiled a major terror attack planned by al-Shabaab commanders based in neighboring Somalia, arresting six top militants who have long evaded their dragnet.
There are periodic attacks by al-Shabaab militants across the porous Kenyan-Somali border.
In a statement, the country’s Police Inspector General Joseph Boinett said that among the six arrested in Burhache, Somali with deadly weapons are two Kenyans who hail from the town of Mandera, which has in the past month been rocked by roadside bomb attacks which have claimed the lives of many policemen.
Boinett said that the police recovered complete anti-personnel explosive devices, four suicide vests, bomb-making materials including trinitrotoluene (TNT), and fragmentation objects.
The six, said to have been planning a major terror attack in Kenya during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, are being interrogated by Kenyan security forces in a bid to expose their support network in Kenya and Somalia.
The news comes hours after the U.S. military confirmed a dawn strike on Sunday in southern Somalia, killing eight al-Shabab militants.
In previous years, Somali-based al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab militants have stepped up terror attacks in Kenya and Somalia during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
