Kenyan police hunt for Al-Shabaab militants after attack on buses

Kenyan authorities said Wednesday a security operation is underway in the coastal town of Lamu in pursuit of Al-Shabaab militants who attacked commuter buses in the area late on Tuesday.

Police said suspected Al-Shabaab militants had tried to blow up a police vehicle that was escorting commuter buses ferrying passengers to Lamu from Mombasa.

"The security operation started late yesterday and it's still underway. We have extended the search to the vast Boni Forest for the Al-Shabaab militants who attacked a convoy of five buses along the Lamu-Mombasa highway," said a senior police officer who sought anonymity.

The attackers are reported to have emerged from the forest and fired arbitrarily at the vehicles before they were repulsed by police officers escorting the commuter buses.

No one was injured in the incident that happened hours after the militants attacked quarry workers in Mandera town close to the Somali border and massacred 14 people early Tuesday.

Residents said tension remains high in the area despite the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) taking over security operations involving the escorting of passenger buses to Lamu.

Kenya is currently engaged in the fight against the militant group in southern Somalia, where its soldiers, under the Africa Union peacekeeping mission AMISOM, has been registering impressive gains and extending humanitarian assistance to the local population.

The East African nation also faces insecurity as bomb attacks using improvised explosive devices and grenades have become more frequent in the capital Nairobi, the coastal and northerns region since KDF entered Somalia in 2011. Endi