Gunmen kill 14 in attack on quarry workers in Kenya

At least 14 people were killed and 11 injured in al-Shabaab militants’ attack on a village near Kenya’s northeastern town of Mandera, Standard Digital News reported Tuesday.

“This (is)… what we understand, (they) were quarry workers”.

People from other parts of Kenya working in the north-east have threatened to leave the area following frequent al-Shabab attacks.

Mandera county commissioner Alex Ole Nkoyo said unidentified gunmen hurled grenades into a residential building located near a livestock market in Mandera county in Kenya.

The raid, in the town of Mandera, mirrored one in the same county in December in which 36 quarry workers died. The attack started with explosions at the gates of the compounds which woke him up at 1 a.m., he said.

Sources said suspected “al-Shabaab” militants first hurled several improvised explosive devices (IEDs) before opening fire on the quarry workers who were sleeping at that time.

Kenya police chief Joseph Boinnet also blamed Shebab for the attack.

Many of those injured were later evacuated and taken to the local hospital.

Abbas Gullet, secretary general of Kenya Red Cross, said the workers were attacked as they slept.

The group has stepped up attacks during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

The most significant attack this year was in April, when Al-Shabab fighters killed 148 people at a university in eastern Kenya.

In 2013, four Shebab gunmen killed at least 67 people in an assault on the Westgate mall in the capital Nairobi.

A Somali soldier stands guard next to the site where Al Shebab militants carried out a suicide attack against a military intelligence base in Mogadishu on Sunday.