The heavily armed Somali men roused the sleeping quarry workers in the dead of night.
As in previous such attacks, the gunmen singled out the non-Muslims by
asking them to recite the Islamic creed. Then they killed 36 of them ?
most with a gunshot to the back of the head, according to a survivor who
hid nearby during the slaughter.
The Islamic militant group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the methodical massacre in northern Kenya
early Tuesday ? 10 days after a similar attack on a bus that killed 28 ?
and it prompted President Uhuru Kenyatta to shake up his national
security team amid public outrage over the continuing violence.
"I know we are all under a lot of pressure, but I appeal to each one of
us: This is not a time to be cowed by the enemy," Kenyatta said in a
nationally televised address.
"This is a war we must win," he said. "We will not flinch or relent in the war against terrorism in our country and our region."
Al-Shabab has been fighting for years to establish hard-line Islamic rule in neighboring Somalia.
The al-Qaida-linked group has vowed to strike against Kenya for sending
its troops into Somalia, and it has claimed it was behind the bus
attack and the siege at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi last year
that left 67 dead.
The group has suffered a series of setbacks this year. It lost control
of a key coastal stronghold in Somalia to government and African Union
troops in October, and its spiritual leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, was
killed in a U.S. airstrike Sept. 1.
But the Nov. 22 bus attack and the quarry killings Tuesday showed that
the group is still capable of bold incursions into the east African
country.
Al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said the quarry attack was a
response to Kenya's deployment of troops to Somalia in 2011 and to
alleged atrocities committed by the Kenyan army there. Al-Shabab said a
recent airstrike had killed innocent people and destroyed their
property.
In his security shakeup, Kenyatta fired Interior Minister Joseph Ole
Lenku, a former hotelier whose competence had been questioned, and
replaced him with Joseph Nkaissery, an opposition politician and retired
army general. Kenyatta also accepted the resignation of Police Chief
David Kimaiyo, who said he was taking early retirement for personal
reasons.
Tuesday's attack began after 12:30 a.m. when about 50 men walked into
the tented camp next to the quarry in the Koromey area on the outskirts
of the town of Mandera, said worker Peter Nderitu.
When he heard the shooting, Nderitu ran and hid in a trench. He said he
heard his colleagues being asked to recite the Shahada, an Islamic creed
declaring oneness with God. Gunshots followed.
He only rose from his hiding place two hours later, when he was sure
there was no more movement. The bodies of his colleagues were in two
rows and nearly all had been shot in the back of the head, he said. The
gunmen escaped.
The bodies of the 36 were flown to Nairobi, where relatives gathered at the city morgue to identify their kin.
Public pressure has been mounting on Kenyatta to replace the two
security officials. In his speech, he said the Kenyan military incursion
in Somalia has been largely a success, putting a depleting al-Shabab in
retreat, although he noted it remains a threat.
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