Gunmen
have killed some 36 quarry workers near the north Kenyan town of Mandera,
police say.
The
attackers separated Muslims from non-Muslims and shot the Christians dead,
residents said.
Earlier,
one person was killed in a bar popular with non-Muslims in a neighbouring
district.
Islamist
militants from the Somalia-based al-Shabab group killed 28 people in an attack
on a bus targeting non-Muslims in the same area last week. Continue...
The
attack on the quarry workers took place early on Tuesday. Witnesses said the
victims were caught after midnight, while sleeping in their tents at the
quarry.
A local
police chief said the assailants targeted non-Muslim workers at the quarry in
Kormey, 15km (nine miles) from Mandera town.
Kenya's Red
Cross said on its Twitter feed that
security personnel and one of its own teams were on the ground at the site of
the attack.
Reuters
news agency quoted one witness as saying that most of the victims had been shot
in the head, and four had been beheaded.
In the
attack on a bar in the town of Wajir earlier on Monday night, gunmen reportedly
opened fire and hurled grenades, killing one and injuring 12.
No
group has so far said it carried out either of the attacks, both of which
occurred close to the border with Somalia.
Mandera
County borders both Somalia and Ethiopia, and it is dominated by Somalis, who
are largely Muslims.
Many of
the quarry workers killed are reported to have come from the south of the
country where Christians predominate.
Al-Shabab
has stepped up its campaign in Kenya since 2011, when Kenya sent troops across
the border to help battle the militants.
In one of the worst attacks on
Kenyan soil, 67 people were killed last year when four gunmen took over the
Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.
More
recently, dozens of people were killed in a series of shooting attacks in
Kenya's coastal districts.
The
security situation has led to calls from the opposition and some in the
governing party to call for the dismissal of Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku
and police chief David Kimaiyo.
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