Police in Kenya announced that five people were killed on Sunday when armed assailants attacked two villages in the Lamu County of southeastern Kenya. They indicated that the attackers set fire to several homes and destroyed property.
The police described the incident as a "terrorist attack," a term commonly used to refer to assaults by the Al-Shabaab militant group from Somalia. Lamu is located near the border with Somalia, and militants from Al-Shabaab frequently carry out attacks in the area in an effort to pressure Kenya to withdraw its troops from Somalia. Kenyan forces in Somalia are part of an international peacekeeping force defending the central government.
The police stated that a group of militants attacked the villages of Salama and Juhudi in the early hours of Sunday. They added that the attackers tied up a 60-year-old man with a rope, "slaughtered him, and burned his house along with its contents," while three others were killed in a similar manner, and the fifth was shot dead.
The police noted that the homes of the victims and those of other residents were set ablaze during the attack, after which the perpetrators hid in a nearby forest. Al-Shabaab, linked to Al-Qaeda, has been seeking for years to overthrow the central government in Somalia and establish governance based on its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
