Al Shabaab kill 16 in Kenya and Somalia blasts

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NAIROBI (Reuters) - Somali militants killed eight Kenyan police with a roadside bomb near the border between the two countries on Saturday, officials said, while another eight died in a bombing the same group carried out in the Somali capital.

Both attacks were claimed by Somali Islamist insurgents, who also kidnapped three Kenyan police reservists on Friday from the same area, in Wajir district in northeast Kenya.

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

Al Shabaab is fighting the weak, U.N.-backed Somali government and its international allies in a quest to impose strict Islamic law.

The vehicle that was hit by the roadside bomb was carrying 11 policemen, police spokesman Charles Owino told Reuters. A local official said eight were killed.

“Eight bodies were found and taken to Wajir. Two were rescued, but they are in critical condition,” said Muhumed Ali Gedi, a member of the local community security team from Wajir who witnessed the rescue mission.

In Mogadishu, al Shabaab detonated two bombs. Police said the first blast, at a busy junction known as K4, was a car bomb intercepted by security services that caused no casualties.

The other blast killed eight people and injured 16, said Abdikadir Abdirahman, the director of Aamin ambulance service.

Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s spokesman for military operations, said the group was responsible for the blast in Kenya and the two in Mogadishu.

Additional reporting by Noor Ali in Isiolo and Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar in Mogadishu,; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Edmund Blair and Andrew Cawthorne

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Bomb kills Kenyan policemen near Somali border

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

Separately, another blast in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu killed eight people, according to emergency services.

Both attacks were claimed by Somali Islamist insurgents who also kidnapped three Kenyan police reservists on Friday from the same area in Wajir district in northeast Kenya.

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

Al Shabaab is fighting the weak, U.N.-backed Somali government and its international allies in a quest to impose strict Islamic law.

Exact casualty figures from Saturday’s patrol attack were still unclear, police spokesman Charles Owino told Reuters.

In Mogadishu, al Shabaab detonated two bombs. Police said the first blast, at a busy junction known as K4, was a car bomb intercepted by security services that caused no casualties.

The other blast killed eight people and injured 16, said Abdikadir Abdirahman, the director of Aamin ambulance service.

Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s spokesman for military operations, said the group was responsible for the blast in Kenya and the two in Mogadishu.

Additional reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar in Mogadishu; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Edmund Blair and Andrew Cawthorne

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Sri Lanka police bring five Easter bomb suspects back from Saudi Arabia

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FILE PHOTO: Security personnel stand guard in front of St Anthony's Shrine, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, April 29, 2019. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui/File Photo

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Five Sri Lankans suspected of having links to Easter Sunday bombings that killed more than 250 people were brought home in police custody on Friday after being deported from Saudi Arabia, police said.

Police declined to provide details of the arrests beyond saying the five were picked up in a Middle Eastern country and were sent back, in the custody of Sri Lankan police, from the Saudi city of Jeddah.

“These are the five remaining leaders of the April 21 terrorist group,” police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera told reporters.

The coordinated Islamist militant suicide bomb attacks on hotels and churches sent shockwaves through the Indian Ocean island state that had enjoyed relative peace since a civil war ended a decade ago.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks that authorities said were carried out by two little-known domestic groups - the National Thawheedh Jamaath (NTJ) and Jamathei Millathu Ibrahim.

Police declined to give information about the nature of the five suspects’ roles in the attacks but said one of them, identified as Mohamed Milhan, was a senior member of the NTJ.

“He could have been the next leader,” Gunasekera said.

Authorities have arrested more than 2,000 people in connection with the attacks. While courts have released most of them on bail, 634 remain in detention.

Authorities say the threat of more attacks has been contained and the security services have dismantled most of the network linked to the bombings.

Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Alexandra Ulmer, Robert Birsel

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Mali president visits Dogon village where dozens killed

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BAMAKO (Reuters) - President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali on Thursday visited the site of an ethnic massacre in central Mali in which gunmen killed dozens of people, vowing once again to crack down on spiraling insecurity.

Attackers believed to belong to the Fulani ethnic group raided the ethnic Dogon village of Sobane Da on Sunday and Monday, killing 35 people, according to the government, although a local authority maintains the real figure is 95 deaths. Neither has produced evidence for these tolls.

Keita cut short a trip to Switzerland on Wednesday to return to Mali and handle the fallout from the attack, the latest in a series of retaliatory strikes by Dogon hunters and Fulani herders that have killed hundreds of civilians this year.

“The state will proceed immediately to disarm anyone who illegally owns a firearm and those who refuse to surrender their arms will be sanctioned severely by the law,” he said in Sobane Da, before visiting the wounded at a local hospital.

Keita’s government made a similar pledge after an attack in March by suspected Dogon militiamen that killed more than 150 Fulani villagers. But it has struggled to disarm militias, whom local communities look to for protection from Islamist militants and ethnic reprisals.

The violence between Dogon and Fulani and regular attacks by jihadist groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State have led many Malians to lose faith in their government’s ability to protect them.

Keita’s government also announced it had fired General Sidy Alassane Toure as governor of the Mopti region where the killings occurred. It declared three days of national mourning.

Toure became the latest government official to lose his job as a result of authorities’ failure to contain spiraling ethnic violence around Mopti.

After the March attack in the village of Ogossagou, Mali’s worst act of violence in years, Keita dismissed two top army officials. His prime minister and entire government also resigned shortly thereafter.

The new prime minister, Boubou Cisse, visited the scene of this week’s killing on Tuesday, and said that among the dead were 24 children, some of whom had been shot in the back.

French forces intervened in Mali, a former French colony, in 2013 to push back a jihadist advance from the north, but the militants have since regrouped and turned parts of north and central Mali into a launchpad for attacks across the region.

Writing by Juliette Jabkhiro and Aaron Ross; Editing by Tim Cocks and Alison Williams

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