TWO KENYA ADMINISTRATION POLICE OFFICERS KILLED AT GARISSA, HOURS AFTER GRENADE ATTACK ON NAIROBI CHURCH

Officers and men of the Kenya Administration Police

CAPITAL FM
September 30, 2012
NAIROBI, Kenya

Two Administration Police officers were shot dead by attackers suspected to be Al Shabaab operatives in Garissa town on Sunday night.

A senior officer in the region told Capital FM News that the officers, both newly posted there, were patrolling Boolimog area when the attack occurred. The assailants then grabbed the officers’ guns and fled.

Provincial police chief Philip Tuimur said a massive security operation was conducted in the area and several
suspects arrested. The attack occurred only hours after an explosion at a church in Pangani killed a nine-year old boy and wounded eight others – in what police suspect to be reprisal attacks following the Kismayu take-over by Kenya Defence Forces. The Pangani blast occurred during a service for young children at the Anglican St. Polycarp church on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital.

Blood-stained children’s jackets and
shoes lay scattered on the floor,
surrounded by remnants of twisted iron sheets from the force of the explosion. It is believed grenades were hurled at the church, but police were also investigating the possibility that the
blast was a result of a bomb that had
been placed in the building earlier, the head of police operations in Nairobi, Wilfred Mbithi said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the hit, the latest in
a string of grenade attacks, shootings
and bomb blasts that have rocked
Kenya since it sent troops into southern Somalia in October 2011 to crush bases of Al-Qaeda-linked Shabaab fighters, who have vowed revenge. The Kenyan intervention came in retaliation for suspected Shabaab attacks on its soil.

Garissa, a town at the border with Somalia has been prone to attacks
from Al Shabaab since Kenya sent its
military to fight the militants in Somalia late last year.