Militants from the Somalia-based al-Shabaab terror group have killed 36 mainly Christian quarry workers, intensifying security fears in much of Kenya’s north.
Witnesses said the attackers surrounded the camp in a remote district near the Somali border shortly after midnight on Tuesday, roused the sleeping workers and ordered those who could not prove they were Muslims to lie on the ground before spraying them with bullets.
It was the second such massacre in recent weeks. On 22 November, al-Shabaab militants stopped passengers on a Nairobi-bound bus and killed the 28 Kenyans who could not recite the Muslim statement of faith known as the Shahada.
The killings occurred in Koromey in Mandera County, about nine miles from the border with Somalia. The area is predominantly settled by Kenyan Somalis who are mainly Muslims.
The region has been racked by fighting in recent weeks, with al-Shabaab claiming it is out to drive Christians “from Muslim lands” and saying it will continue to carry out attacks in Kenya in retaliation for the country’s involvement in a UN-backed peacekeeping force in Somalia.
Kenyan security forces were said to be locked in a crisis meeting and the president, Uhuru Kenyatta, was scheduled to address the nation on Tuesday afternoon.
His government has come under severe criticism for its fumbling response to the security crisis, which has begun to have a major effect on the economy.
Tour industry operators say arrivals are sharply down this year, continuing a downward spiral that began after al-Shabaab militants carried out a four-day siege of the Westgate mall in Nairobi in September 2013 which left 67 dead.
Earlier on Tuesday, masked gunmen raided a pub in Wajir, another town near the Somali border, and killed one reveller and wounded three others, the Kenya police spokesperson Zipporah Mboroki said.
Kenyan troops moved into Somalia in October 2011 to try to establish a buffer zone between the country and Kenya following a spate of cross-border attacks by al-Shabaab.
But the mission appears to have backfired, with al-Shabaab militants able to cross the border at will and carry out attacks in Kenya three years after the operation was launched.
Some in Kenya blame corrupt police officers and immigration officials for allowing the militants across the border.
The religious flavour of the killings has also raised concerns that it could stoke intercommunal tensions.
The vice-chairman of the Supreme Council of Kenyan Muslims, Abdullahi Sirat, urged citizens not to rise to al-Shabaab’s bait and take up arms against one another.
“Kenyans should stand united to defeat al-Shabaab because they are also the number one enemies of Islam,” he said. “They are without religion and the Kenyan government should deal with them anywhere they may be hiding.”
