Gunmen slaughter 36 in fresh northeast Kenya attack

NAIROBI, Dec 2 (AFP): Gunmen have massacred 36 people in northeast Kenya in the latest attack by suspected militants from Somalia's Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab rebels in the troubled region, officials said Tuesday.
A group of gunmen attacked a quarry near the town of Mandera in the early hours of Tuesday morning. After spraying tents where the quarry workers slept with gunfire, the militants then weeded out non-Muslims and shot them in the head. Some of the victims were also beheaded, police sources and reports said.
The attack comes just over a week after the Shebab claimed responsibility for the execution of 28 people who were grabbed from a bus travelling from Mandera, a border town located on the frontier between Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.
In a separate attack late Monday in the town of Wajir, also in the northeast and close to the dangerous border with war-torn Somalia, one person was killed and 12 wounded when gunmen hurled grenades and fired into a bar.
"We have lost 36 people, but there are others missing," said a local police official Mandera, who asked not to be named. "We don't know whether they were taken by the attackers."
Police spokesman Zipporah Mboroki confirmed the attacks but said the force would provide an exact toll of those killed later. Media reports said most of the victims were laid out on the ground and shot in the head, a style of killing used in the recent attack on bus passengers.
Kenya has suffered a series of attacks since invading Somalia in 2011 to attack the Shebab, and its troops are still in Somalia as part of an African Union force battling the Islamists.
Media reports from Somalia said the Shebab's radio station has hailed the killing of "crusaders", although there has not yet been formal claim of responsibility from the militants.
Professionals working in the largely Muslim and ethnic Somali northeastern regions often come from further south in Kenya, where Christians make up about 80 percent of the population. Those working in the quarry attacked on Tuesday were also reported to have been from outside the region.