Al-Shabab kills Kenyan soldier amid enforce disappearance reported in Mandera
Al-Shabab fighters killed a Kenyan soldier and injured two others after the group ambushed army vehicles heading Mandera town, official said.
The convoy was ambushed between Elwak and Lafey town, according to Mandera County Commissioner Fredrick Shisia.
Shesia said the area of attack is close to Kenya’s border with Somalia making it easy for the attackers to move back into Somalia before Kenyan military reinforcements arrived at the scene.
This comes days after mass graves found at Lethi locality presumably being missing residents through enforce disappearance conducted by Security forces.
A 48 years old mother of five Mama Isnina’s body was exhumed by local residents barely three days after the security forces arrested her from tea-shop at Arabia-bus-station in Mandera.
A day later, Kenya’s interior cabinet secretary, Joseph Nkesairy said deceased was Al-Shabab cook and entered the country from Bulla-hawa of Somalia after Al-Shabab was defeated by SNA soldiers backed AMISOM troops.
Mandera Members of County Assembly (MCAs) who met yesterday have called on the government to end alleged extra judicial killings in the region which they blame for many disappearances of residents.
The members led by majority leader in the assembly Robow Mohamed held a press conference at the Assembly headquarters where the accused Interior CS Joseph Nkaissery of the disappearances.
The MCAs said Nkaissery is not above the law adding that the constitution of the country must be upheld.
“Nkaissery saying the mother of five whose body was found in a shallow grave at Lethi around Arabia Ward was an al Shabaab cook was a confirmation that she was assassinated by our security agencies,” Robow said.
The MCAs affirmed that they will make sure the outcry of their electorate is heard by the President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Mandera Township MCA Feisal Abdinoor faulted Nkesairy for trying to gag the county’s leadership and told Police Spokesman Charles Owino to produce the missing individuals if he doesn’t want to be blamed.
“People have been booked in the OB (occurrence book). If one body we produced is not enough, hundreds will not be enough also,” Feisal said
The MCAs criticised Senator Billow Kerow’s arrest after touching down at Wilson Airport on Thursday saying he was addressing the grievances of Mandera County residents.
Citing Human Right Report of the disappearance of 12 people, Elwak South MCA Mohamed Abdi said they must be produced dead or alive.
Mid this year Kenya National Human Right released preliminary report that documented over one hundred and twenty (120) cases of egregious human rights violations that include twenty five (25) extrajudicial killings and eighty one (81) enforced disappearances carried out jointly by various units of the National Police Service including the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU), Kenya Police Reservists (KPRs), Rapid Deployment Unit (RDU) of the Administration Police, Border Patrol Unit (BPU) and the General Service Unit (GSU) and KDF.
Kenya has experienced a wave of retaliatory attacks by al-Shabab since it sent its troop to Somalia to fight the extremists in 2011. Al-Shabab militants were responsible for attack on a university in eastern Kenya this year which killed 147 people, many of them students.