Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta |
Kenyan President Uhuru
Kenyatta has replaced his interior minister and police chief following a massacre by
Islamist group al-Shabab.
The president asked
Kenyans to unite, and said: "We will not flinch in war against
terrorists."
Kenya's police chief
David Kimaiyo stood down, while Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku was
dismissed. Continue..
Earlier, al-Shabab
killed 36 quarry workers in the north-eastern Mandera region near the Somali
border.
The group attacked the
workers around midnight on Monday while they were asleep in tents at the quarry
in Kormey, 15km (9 miles) from the town of Mandera.
Non-Muslim workers
were shot dead after being separated from the Muslims.
'Choose
a side'
"This is a war
against Kenya and Kenyans," Mr Kenyatta said on national TV on Monday.
"It is a war that every one of us must fight."
"The time has
come for each and every one of us to decide and choose - are you on the side of
an open, free, democratic Kenya... or do you stand with repressive, intolerant
extremists?"
He said Interior
Minister Joseph Ole Lenku had been fired, and he nominated an opposition
politician and former army general, Joseph Nkaissery, as his replacement.
The president also
announced that he had accepted Mr Kimaiyo's wish to retire.
Correspondents say
both Mr Kimaiyo and Mr Lenku have been under pressure to resign amid growing
concern over security in Kenya following a spate of attacks.
Analysis:
Robert Kiptoo, BBC Africa, Nairobi
Most Kenyans will be
pleased by the departure of police chief David Kimaiyo and Interior Minister
Joseph Ole Lenku - two men widely blamed for the failure to get to grips with
the insurgency.
President Kenyatta has
shown his determination to declare war on al-Shabab by nominating a former army
general as the new interior minister.
If Kenya's parliament
approves his nomination, Joseph Nkaissery will become the first opposition MP
handed such a key ministerial post since Kenya adopted a new constitution in
2010.
Like his predecessor,
Mr Nkaissery comes from the Maasai community, suggesting the president took
into account the need to ensure the ethnic group remains represented in
government.
At a time when
al-Shabab is threatening Kenya's security, Mr Kenyatta cannot afford to cause
ethnic tension by alienating any group.
A driver who visited
the scene of Monday's attack, Ali Sheikh Yusuf, told the BBC most of the
victims appeared to have been lined up and shot in the head at close range.
He said four were
beheaded inside their tents, while three appeared to have escaped to Mandera
town.
Al-Shabab said it carried
out the attack, blaming the involvement of Kenyan forces in
Somalia "and their ongoing atrocities therein, such as the recent air
strikes on Muslims".
The
group put the number of those killed at 40, higher than official accounts.
Kenya's Red
Cross said that
security personnel and one of its own teams were at the scene soon after the
attack.
Al-Shabab
is based in Somalia but has stepped up its campaign in Kenya since 2011, when
Kenya sent troops across the border to help battle the militants.
Only last week the Islamist
group killed 28 people in Mandera county in an attack on a bus targeting
non-Muslims.
Hundreds
of people later fled to a military strip, demanding the government evacuate
them from the region.
Demonstrators
took to the streets in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, calling on the president to
improve security.
Dozens
of people have also been killed in a series of shootings in coastal districts
in recent months.
In one
of the worst attacks on Kenyan soil, 67 people were killed in September last
year when four gunmen took over the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.
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