Gunmen believed to be Al-Shabaab militants raided a police station in Wajir County and killed two of their detained accomplices.
The attackers injured three police officers and later escaped after leaving a trail of massive destruction.
The unknown number of gunmen staged the raid on Tuesday night as it rained sending police officers on duty into a panic mode.
The officers took cover giving way to the attackers to raid the station.
Witnesses and police said the gunmen attacked Dadajabula Police Station at about 8 pm. The station is about 13 kilometres from the porous Kenya-Somalia border.
The gang is said to have used rocket-propelled grenades in the attack scaring officers on duty.
Back-up
The officers called for reinforcement from the military but by the time the team arrived, the gang had accessed the police cells and killed two men who were being held over terror related incidents.
North Eastern regional police boss Paul Soi said they were planning to interrogate the suspects who had been at the station for a couple of hours.
There were plans to transfer the suspects to another station before the gang raided.
“It seems they were high value suspects. They were pulled from the cells and killed,” said a local official who asked not to be named.
A female civilian was also injured in the attack alongside two police officers and police reservist. The station was burnt in the attack.
The incident comes days after Somalia authorities handed over to Kenya two men believed to be members of Al-Shabaab terror group.
According to police, they are believed to have fled to Somalia after committing a crime in the region and especially near Liboi border.
When they were handed over to Kenya on October 23 one of them had an AK47 rifle belonging to Kenya police.
Those handed over were identified as Farah Ahmed Sanbul alias Faragon and Mihat Daar Khalif and they had an AK47 rifle belonging to Kenya Police which had 30 bullets, another AK47 rifle belonging to Somalia with five magazines and 117 bullets, another AK47 rifle with four bullets and a pistol which had five magazines with 40 bullets.
This comes days after police identified Abdullahi Banati, as the man who led the team that planted the Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) leading to the death of General Service Unit officers stationed at the Harhar camp on October 12, 2019.
Police say Banati planned the attack alongside Al-Shabaab operatives based in the Daadab refugee camp, which has been associated with several other terrorist attacks.
According to police, Banati and his team operate along the Kenya-Somali border and have been executing attacks on security agencies.
“Police have traced the activities of Banati and his team of militants to the border and it is suspected that he escaped to Somalia with the rest of the operatives,” said police in a statement.
Banati is reported to have joined the militant group in 2012 and took part in the attack on the Baure Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) camp in 2015 where 11 of his colleagues were killed.
He is reported to have been injured but went into hiding only to resurface in 2018 when he took part in several attacks along the Somalia border.
Police have now appealed to members of the public with any information on the suspect to report it to them immediately.
A joint patrol team of officers drawn from Kenya Defence Forces (KDF), Administration Police, Rapid Border Patrol Unit and Kenya Police Service have since been deployed to comb the area around the scene of the incident.
