Africa 

Roadside bomb kills Kenyan police near Somali border

NAIROBI (Reuters) – A roadside bomb hit a vehicle patrolling near Kenya’s border with Somalia on Saturday, killing several of the 11 police officers onboard, the police spokesman said.

Charles Owino told Reuters that he was still awaiting exact casualty figures.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but Somali Islamist insurgents carry out frequent attacks on Kenyan security forces.

Somali al Shabaab insurgents claimed responsibility on Friday for kidnapping three Kenyan police reservists from Wajir, in northeast Kenya near the Somali border.

“Last night, we captured a village called Konton in Wajir county. We left the village and took three Kenyan policemen with us,” Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s spokesman for military operations, told Reuters by phone.

Kenyan military forces have occupied part of southern Somalia along the two countries’ shared border since 2011. The Kenyans, along with allied Somali militia, wrested back control of the territory from al Shabaab after a spate of kidnappings on Kenyan soil.

Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Edmund Blair

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