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Kenya: 4 People Arrested Over Lamu Attack That Left 6 Dead

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Nairobi — Four suspects have been arrested over Monday’s attack in Lamu where six people were killed in an attack linked to Al Shabaab militants.

Police said they are also investigating to establish if the attack is linked to a land dispute in the region pitting locals and people perceived to be non-locals.

“There are four suspects in custody arrested over the attack,” said Bruno Shioso, National Police Spokesman, “investigations have shown the attack is linked to local land disputes.”

He said there was another attack in Hindi area where 1 person was killed on Monday night.

Six people were killed and homes torched on Sunday night in a grisly attack that left one man beheaded.

Five were shot or burned to death in the assault on a village in Lamu County which began late Sunday and dragged into early Monday, police said.

Lamu County Commissioner Irungu Macharia said the attackers were suspected to be from Al-Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group based across the border in Somalia.

But he said investigators were also looking into other motives, including a possible land dispute.

“We will explore all the angles,” he said.

“We suspect it is Al-Shabaab but that does not limit our investigations to other issues including a land tussle.”

There has not yet been any claim of responsibility for the attack.

Police said the assailants stabbed and beheaded a local elder and razed his home, and shot dead another man whose body was found on a roadside nearby.

The corpses of four other men burned beyond recognition were found with their hands bound in another location, according to a police report seen by AFP.

“Also several houses were torched within the locality and property of unknown value burnt,” the report said, adding that bullet casings were recovered.

A senior police officer in the area, which lies about 420 kilometres (260 miles) southeast of Nairobi, said four of those killed were not local residents, and that some may have been involved in land disputes, without elaborating.

Lamu County governor Fahim Twaha condemned those responsible for the “atrocities committed against innocent people”.

“It is our hope that the criminals will be apprehended soon. We are certain they will face God’s justice in this world and in the hereafter,” he told AFP.