Four people including three police officers have been killed in a suspected attack by Al-Shabaab jihadists in a Kenyan town near the border with Somalia, police said.
The explosion occurred on Monday at a hotel near a police station in Mandera, northeastern Kenya, an area often targeted by the Somalia-based group.
Police said several other people were wounded.
“We suspect the involvement of Al-Shabaab in this incident,” a police officer told AFP on Tuesday.
“A major security operation is going on and an investigation on the involvement of people they are working with locally.”
Local media also reported that two police reservists were killed in a weekend raid by suspected Al-Shabaab fighters in Lamu County, on Kenya’s northern coast.
The East African nation is a major contributor to an African Union force backing Somalia’s central government in its fight against Al-Shabaab and has suffered a string of deadly retaliatory assaults.
After a relative lull in violence, the Al-Qaeda linked group has staged several attacks in Somalia during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, including a siege on a hotel in the capital Mogadishu that killed three people.
Somalia’s beleaguered government launched a major offensive against the Islamists in August 2022, joining forces with local clan militias.
Although the government has reported some success, with swathes of territory in central Somalia recaptured, Al-Shabaab claimed earlier this month it had taken multiple locations in the region.
