Kenya police hunting for terror suspect in coastal region

A manhunt have launched for a terror suspect evaded a police dragnet on Sunday in the coastal county of Mombasa in a security operation.

Mombasa County CID commander Henry Ondiek confirmed that more than 30 heavily armed police officers from the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit and Serious Crime Unit raided the suspect Farid Omar Awadh's house in the wee hours of Sunday morning, but missed him.

"We are still looking for him and we are aware that he is back in the country, the manhunt will continue," Ondiek said in Mombasa.

Ondiek also said that the suspect is believed to have returned from Somalia and was due to carry out attacks on unspecified locations in the tourism resorts in the region.

A senior National Intelligence Service officer involved in the operation told Xinhua that Awadh was under police radar over alleged recruiting and funding of terrorism activities.

The officer, who sought anonymity, said Awadh was part Jeysh Ayman, an Al-Shabaab terror cells operating from Boni Forest in the coastal county of Lamu.

"We had intelligence information that Awadh is now back and shared information among anti-terrorism police officers who conducted the operation, but unfortunately they missed the target," said the NIS officer.

The security operation comes after human rights activists have accused anti-terror police unit of engaging in forced disappearance and extrajudicial killing of terror suspects in the coastal region.

The Kenyan government has already launched a 90-day operation to flush out the Somali militants from the vast Boni Forest believed to be their hideout of the insurgents. Endit