Four school children at a primary school in Kenya were killed by suspected Al-Shabaab extremists on Tuesday. It was the third such deadly incident in Kenya in the past week, police said.
Investigators say militants fired at a telecommunications mast belonging to Kenya’s leading operator Safaricom and at police guarding the school.
However the militants did not manage to damage the telecom network, the police explained.
“Officers manning the mast and the base together with Special Forces were able to repulse them,” police said.
According to police spokesman Charles Owino, officers killed two attackers and recovered two assault rifles and bomb-making materials.
Owino said in a statement earlier on Tuesday that a teacher was among those killed.
“I console the families of the four pupils that were killed by the heartless terrorist militia who are hell-bent on slaying innocent lives, instilling fear and disrupting education in the region,” Garissa County Governor Ali Korane said in a statement.
Mohamed Dubow Aden, Garissa County’s Red Cross coordinator told Reuters that the attackers also wounded three other children.
Three of the children killed were from the same family, said Mohamed.
The attack occurred in a village in eastern Garissa County which neighbors Somalia.
Al-Shabaab carries out frequent attacks in Kenya in retaliation for Kenya sending their troops into Somalia in 2011 after a series of cross-border attacks and kidnappings.
The United States has sent more troops to Kenya to reinforce security after the militia group killed three Americans on Sunday in an attack on a military base in the country used by U.S forces.
