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Kenyan police kill 2 Al-Shabaab suspects in border region

Xinhua, May 13, 2015 Adjust font size:

Kenyan police have killed two Al-Shabaab suspects who had attacked a police camp in Hamey, Garissa County near the Kenya-Somalia border on Tuesday night.

Garissa divisional police commander Raphael Kimilu said about 15 gunmen engaged the police in a fierce gun battle that lasted for hours in Hamey patrol base in Dadaab district at around 11 p.m. local time, and one police officer was killed during the battle.

"The gunmen were however repulsed after the attack. The officers there managed to kill two of the attackers but they had also killed an officer," he said.

Hamey is in Garissa County and is on the border of Kenya and Somalia.

Kimilu said his officers responded immediately after the attack where they engaged the insurgents in a gun fight that saw two of them killed.

It's believed that the militants' sole mission was to kill the officers and then proceed to steal the firearms. The militants managed to run for almost ten kilometers away with the body where they abandoned it, police said.

Kimilu said they have managed to recover the bodies of the attackers who were killed by security officers while at the same mobilizing all other security agencies to pursue the others who are suspected to have fled to the neighboring war-torn Somalia.

In May 2013, two teachers and several police officers lost their lives after the militants from Somalia attacked the area.

Since the Garissa terror attack, the police have intensified border patrols and have been rounding up several suspects who are being grilled in various police stations over possible links to Al- Shabaab and the Garissa massacre on April 2.

The Al-Shabaab terror group, which has links to Al-Qaida network, claimed responsibility for the attack which mainly targeted Christians.

Kenyan authorities have also blamed the militants for being behind spates of kidnapping of expatriates working in the sprawling refugee camps in the incursion-prone northern region and tourists in the coastal archipelago towns of Mombasa and Lamu. Endi