At least three people were killed near Kenya’s southeastern border with Somalia yesterday when gunmen ambushed the bus they were travelling in, a government official said.
The bus was travelling from the coastal region of Lamu to the town of Malindi when gunmen opened fire.
“Three people have been killed during the attack but we are trying to establish how many people were in the bus,” said Lamu County Commissioner Irungu Macharia.
It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.
The Kenyan coast is popular with tourists, although many travellers fly into top destinations such as Malindi and the island of Lamu rather than access them by road.
“Some suspected bandits shot at the bus, but the driver managed to drive off,” Macharia said.
“It is suspected to be a terrorist attack, but we cannot confirm because we don’t know – it could be anybody, bandits or any other criminal element.”
The bus belonged to the Mombasa Raha company.
It was unclear how many passengers were on the bus, according to Macharia.
The attack occurred in a forested area where the road is partially tarmacked, he said.
Some panicked passengers jumped out of the bus and tried to run away from the scene.
“That is how a majority of them met their death,” he said.
Attacks along the Kenya-Somalia border by Al Shebaab militants are common, notably targeting security forces with roadside bombs.
In their November report, a UN panel of experts on Somalia noted an “unprecedented number” of homemade bombs and other attacks across the Kenya-Somalia border in June and July last year.
The Shebaab have also carried out large-scale attacks in Kenyan urban areas, most recently the assault on the upscale DusitD2 hotel complex in Nairobi on January 15, 2019 in which 21 were killed.
The group began targeting Kenya after it sent troops into Somalia in 2011 to help combat the militants, who have been fighting since 2007 to topple a fragile, internationally-backed government in Mogadishu.
Despite a decade-long fight led by African Union peacekeepers, the Shebaab are still able to launch deadly attacks in Somalia.
A car bomb in Mogadishu on Saturday killed 81 people.