MANDERA, Kenya — Church members in a northeastern town in Kenya fear for their lives after six people died in a gun and grenade attack by Islamic extremists Oct. 6.
Targeting predominantly Christian migrant workers from Kenya’s interior, rebels from Somalia’s Al Shabaab group reportedly took responsibility for the attack at a residential compound in Mandera, with a spokesman for the militants saying it was designed to drive Christians from the area. The attack in Mandera, tucked in Kenya’s northeast corner near the Somali border, reportedly wounded several others.
Among 27 people rescued were Christians who arrived at their church traumatized and in shock. “The loud grenade woke me up, and I heard one of the attackers saying the ‘infidels’ should leave the Muslim area of Mandera,” one survivor said. “There were loud cries for help as the attackers were shooting from all directions.”
Earlier in 2016 in a pre-dawn raid on a predominantly Christian area in coastal Kenya, Al Shabaab rebels killed at least four Christians, beheading one of them, and they have carried out other attacks in the Mandera area.
An attack on a bus and a truck near Mandera by Al Shabaab insurgents took the lives of two Christians in December 2015, and on July 7, 2015, Al Shabaab killed 17 quarry workers near Mandera, including several Christians. (MS)
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