Kenyan police foil attack, kill Al-Shabaab militant in coastal town

Kenya's anti-terrorism police on Monday thwarted an attack and killed a wanted Al-Shabaab militant in the coastal town of Kwale.

Regional police commander, Francis Wanjohi, said the security officers arrested three other suspects and recovered a hand grenade and a motorbike.

Wanjohi said the detectives were acting on intelligence information about a planned terrorist attack in Kwale.

"Our officers raided the hideouts of suspected Al-Shabaab returnees and killed one of them. They are a group of Al-Shabaab members whom we have been trailing for months," Wanjohi said, adding "the operation is still on."

According to reports, a wanted terror suspect named Idris Aden was among the three arrested during the operation.

The police said Aden was dispatched from a Al-Shabaab stronghold in Somalia to coordinate terror attacks in the Kenyan coastal region.

Police are investigating if the group was behind recent killings of three community leaders and a reformed Al-Shabaab returnee in the coastal region.

The four had come out openly to oppose the extremism ideologies of Al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based Islamist group that has carried out several deadly attacks in Kenya in recent years.

The latest incident comes hours after suspcted Al-Shabaab militants killed five police officers and injured four others in an ambush on their vehicle in Mandera county near the border with Somalia.

The Mandera incident comes months after an attack on a Nairobi-bound bus in the same area, killing at least two people.

Intelligence reports, which Xinhua could not confirm, indicate Al-Shabaab militants are planning attacks in counties of the larger northern Kenya as well as on government security installations in the major cities of Nairobi and Mombasa. Endit