At least 11 people were killed in a new attack on Kenya’s coastal region, officials said Tuesday. This comes barely a week after some 60 people died in twin massacres around the same area.
Some were reportedly hacked to death with knives while others were shot and executed at close range, mirroring tactics used in earlier attacks claimed by Somalia’s Al-Shabaab terror group.
The attack took place overnight on a small village near the town of Witu, on the mainland some 50 kilometres west of the tourist island of Lamu.
Lamu County Commissioner Stephen Ikua called it an unfortunate attack, the third in the area this month.
The local councillor, Athaman Badi said that several people were reported to have been wounded in the attack and taken to nearby hospitals for treatment.
The village is inhabited by Kenyans from different ethnic communities and groupings.
Attacks last week on the nearby coastal Mpeketoni region left at least 60 dead.
Last week’s attacks were claimed by Somalia’s Islamist Shabaab insurgents, although President Uhuru Kenyatta claimed that they were “well-planned, orchestrated and politically motivated ethnic violence” and meted by what he called “local political networks”.
President Kenyatta’s accusations have caused rising tension between the government and opposition parties, and raised fears of renewed ethnic tension with threat leaflets against the Luo community being circulated in some parts of the country.
Somalia’s Shabaab have carried out massacres staged as a string of revenge attacks for Kenya’s military role in southern Somalia, including last year’s siege of the Westgate shopping mall that left 67 people dead.
Meanwhile, at least 20 people were killed over the weekend in north-eastern Kenya in ethnic clashes, the latest in a series of revenge attacks between rival clans that have led to the deaths of over 80 people and forced over 75,000 people from their homes since May.
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