ZANCOM MEDIA

Shooting reported in Kenyan coastal region

Reports of gunfire in Lamu district, the same area where some sixty people were killed last month.

The previous attack at Mpeketoni has led to unrest over a perceived lack of security provided to the town [AP]

Shooting has been reported in Kenya's coastal district of Lamu, the same area where some 60 people were massacred last month, authorities said. Kenya's National Disaster Operations Centre said in a brief statement on Twitter late on Saturday that gunfire broke out in the trading centre of Hindi near the town of Mpeketoni, the scene of the mass killings. The NDOC said that local authorities and police were responding and that the "location has been secured". But there were no reports of casualties. Details of the incident were not immediately clear, although a spokesman for Somalia's al-Shabab rebels issued a statement claiming that the group's fighters had carried out another attack in the area. "The attackers came back home safely to their base," al-Shabab military spokesman Abdulaziz Abu Musab said, claiming that 10 people had been killed in the attack. The Kenyan Red Cross also said no casualties had been reported. The incident took place around 15 kilometres from Lamu, once a popular tourist resort. Previous attack Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for last month's attack at Mpeketoni, saying it was in retaliation for Kenya's military presence in Somalia as part of the African Union force backing the country's fragile and internationally-backed government. Survivors of the attack on the town and a similar attack the following night in a nearby village reported gunmen speaking Somali and carrying al-Shabab flags killed non-Muslims and said their actions were revenge for Kenya's military presence in Somalia as part of the African Union force fighting the group. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, however, denied that al-Shabab were involved and instead blamed "local political networks" and said that the victims had been singled out because of their ethnicity. The attackers appeared to target Mpeketoni because the town is a mainly Christian settlement in the Muslim-majority coastal region, having been settled decades ago by the Kikuyu people, the same tribe as Kenyatta. Police also arrested alleged separatists from the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC), a group that campaigns for independence of the coastal region, as well as the governor of Lamu county, who is an opposition politician. The unrest in the coastal region has badly dented Kenya's tourist industry - a key foreign currency earner and massive employer for the country - at one of its traditionally busiest times of the year.

Source: AFP