At least 36 people are feared dead after gunmen staged an attack on a quarry in north-east Kenya, according to the Red Cross.
The attack took place over Monday night 10 miles (16km) from the remote town of Mandera and close to the dangerous border with Somalia, in the same area where the al-Shabaab group has carried out a string of raids.
Assailants reportedly sprayed gunfire at tents where the workers were sleeping. “Our team is on the ground undertaking assessments of the attack,” Red Cross Kenya said on Tuesday.
Police spokesman Zipporah Mboroki confirmed the attacks but said the force would provide exact tolls of those killed later. However, a senior police official said 36 people had been killed and there were fears others may have been abducted.
“We have lost 36 people, but there are others missing,” said the police official, who asked not to be named. “We don’t know whether they were taken by the attackers.”
In a separate attack on Monday night in the town of Wajir, one person died and 12 were wounded when gunmen hurled grenades and sprayed a bar with bullets.
The quarry in Mandera is close to where Islamists last month singled out and murdered 28 non-Muslims who were grabbed from a bus.
Al-Shabaab said the bus attack was carried out in revenge for police raids on mosques in Kenya’s key port of Mombasa.
Kenya has suffered a series of attacks since invading Somalia in 2011 to attack al-Shabaab. Kenyan forces have since joined an African Union force battling the Islamists.
Several key unions including for civil servants have warned members to leave the north-east until the government can ensure their safety.
Professionals working in the largely Muslim and ethnic Somali north-eastern regions often come from further south in Kenya, where Christians make up about 80% of the population.
On Sunday Kenyan media reported that the embattled interior minister and police chief may soon be sacked over “repeated lapses” in security following a wave of attacks.
Both officials mentioned in the report have been under fire since last year’s attack by al-Shabaab at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, in which at least 67 people were killed in a siege involving four gunmen that lasted four days.
Worries over internal security mounted when al-Shabaab rebels massacred 100 people in a string of raids against villages in the Lamu region on the Kenyan coast in June and July.
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