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Cuban doctors deployed along the Kenyan border with Somalia are being evacuated following the kidnapping last week of two Cuban doctors and the killing of their Police escort.

Suspected al-Shabab extremists kidnapped two Cuban doctors in Mandera County on Friday as they were heading to work, killing one of their police bodyguards.

Witnesses said the doctors were being escorted to work when two salon cars blocked their way and shots rent the air in an ambush.

Doctors Landy Rodriguez (a surgeon) and Herera Correa (general practitioner) had settled in well at the Mandera Referral Hospital where they had been working in the past year.

Mandera town is about a kilometer away from the main Kenya- Somalia border.

The gang took the doctors from their car and forced them into one of theirs and drove off.

Security sources say they crossed over to Somalia with their captives.

A driver linked to the disappearance of two Cuban doctors in Mandera was been detained for 15 days.

Magistrate Muthoni Nzibe on Monday directed that Issac lbrein Elbow, who was arrested in Mandera, be detained at a police station in Nairobi.

According to ATPU, information gathered so far show that the suspect was involved in the plot to kidnap the two Cuban doctors and that there was communication between him and the attackers.

The abducted doctors are among 100 Cuban specialists who arrived in the country in June 2018.

Lamu County officer in charge of health Anne Gathoni said Monday that the remaining Cuban doctors had been evacuated from Lamu because they had been traumatized by the kidnapping of their colleagues.

The two, an orthopedic surgeon and a physician, had been deployed to Lamu by the government in July, 2018. Somalia’s al-Shabab extremist rebels are suspected of carrying out the kidnapping.

The search for the medics is still ongoing as Mandera elders left for Somalia on Friday to negotiate with their counterparts on the release of the two doctors.

Elders of the Somali community are highly regarded and have the ability to resolve dangerous and sometimes complex issues.

On Saturday, the Cuban doctors attached to Wajir and Garissa Counties were also evacuated following the abduction of their colleagues in Mandera on April 12.

The extremist group has had a long standing vendetta with Kenya and has vowed retribution against the country for sending troops to Somalia to fight the militants.