A man suspected to be an al-Shabaab terrorist was shot dead on Thursday after he stabbed a General Service Unit (GSU) officer at the heavily guarded US Embassy in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
“The US Embassy confirms there was a shooting incident near the embassy. No Embassy personnel were involved. We refer you to Kenyan authorities for further details,” said a statement from the embassy.
The man’s identity was not immediately known, but bystanders posted pictures of his body to social media after he was killed.
The suspect, it is reported, was trying to forcibly gain entry into the embassy when he was blocked by the Kenyan officer at the gate. He grabbed an officer near the visa section of the embassy and after a confrontation removed a dagger from his pants and stabbed the officer in the head and chest, the Star, Kenya reports.
“The attacker is a male of Somali origin. The knife has been recovered, body (is) still at the scene,” the local Gigiri police boss Vitalis Otieno told Kenya’s Daily Nation.
National police spokesman George Kinoti said an investigation had begun and said the man was killed by the police officer in self-defense.
“It was a lone criminal who attacked a police officer,” Kinoti told Reuters. “He was armed with a knife”
Embassy employees took cover during the shooting, according to a report from the New York Times. The suspect was reportedly born in Wajir, Kenya in 1992.
The stabbed officer is in a stable condition.
