Feature: Kenya's Mandera attack survivors recall ordeal, vow not to return

Michael Mwaniki says he will never to set his foot again in Mandera country which has experienced a string of terror attacks in the past two years.

Mwaniki is one of the survivors in Tuesday's dawn terror attack in Mandera town, close to Somali border, where 14 people were killed by Al-Shabaab militants.

The 28-year-old is also a survivor of a similar attack in a quarry in December last year in the same county that left 36 people massacred. A resident from Nyeri County in central Kenya, Mwaniki said he returned to work at the quarry barely a month ago in belief that security had been restored in the area.

However, the young man lost his father in the attack.

"My father came back in January after six months lull in fighting, and I had all the reasons to believe that security had normalized only to realize that I was wrong," said tearful Mwaniki.

The survivor, who witnessed the body of his father being loaded into the military aircraft, said that he took refuge in the ceiling with his roommates when they heard a loud bang at the gate followed by numerous gun shots.

"I can't believe that I have cheated death twice in the hands of Al-Shabaab within a period not less than seven months. Surely I must be one of the luckiest human being on earth,"he said.

The attack happened at about 2:00 a.m. in Soko Mbuzi village outside of the Mandera town, which is predominantly inhabited by nonlocal who are mostly stonemasons.

David Mungai, who hails from central Kenya's Tharaka Nithi County and who has been in Mandera for only three weeks, also expressed unwillingness to go back in the area.

Mungai, who sustained a gun shot injury in his right shoulder, said that many of the quarry laborers are attracted by the good pay offered in the area in spite of the insecurity concerns.

He said that when the gunmen who shot him, he pretended to be dead on the ground after blood from his colleague spilled over where he was lying, and as result, confusing the assailants.

Somalia-based Al-Shabaab militants have carried out several attacks in Kenya since Kenyan troops joined the effort in Somalia to battle the Al-Qaida-linked fighters in 2011.

This is the first terror attack in Mandera barely a month when northeastern regional coordinator Mohamud Saleh visited the area in a security tour that was meant to rally locals to support the government in the war against terror. Endi