At least 12 civilians were killed in a bomb attack in northeast Kenya on Tuesday morning. The attack took place in a guest house in northern Mandera County near the Somali border, reported Associated Press. Mandera's regional commander Mohamed Saleh said the attack was carried out by the Somali-based al-Shabaab militant group.
Investigators said that there were 33 non-local occupants at the guest house when the militants attacked with grenades and IEDs, Kenyan newspaper The Star reported. The police managed to rescue 10 people, of whom four were injured. "We don't know how many people are still trapped there in the rubble but efforts to reach them are ongoing," a police officer told local newspaper The Standard Media.
A senior police officer told AFP, "We have found 12 bodies so far after we managed to access the building." He said that security personnel were still in the process of searching the neighbourhood. Anti-terrorism police and sniffer dogs were also pressed into action.
This is the second such attack on non-locals in the area. A suspected al-Shabaab attack on a residential plot killed six people in Mandera Town, capital of Mandera County, on October 5.
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