Al-Shabab feared behind Kenya blast

NAIROBI, Kenya — An improvised explosive device killed four people in a passenger vehicle in northern Kenya in a suspected extremist attack, an official said Friday, as fears grew that the al-Shabab extremist group in neighboring Somalia had adopted a deadly new strategy.

Northeastern Coordinator Mohamed Saleh said the 11 other people in the vehicle were critically injured. One of those killed was a government chief and another chief was critically wounded, said Eric Oronyi, a deputy county commissioner. The vehicle is used commercially along the Elwak-Mandera route, he said.

Similar explosions in Kenya in the past month had killed at least 34 people, including 20 police officers. Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for those attacks.

The al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab has vowed retribution on Kenya for sending troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight the extremists. Kenya is part of the multinational African Union mission in Somalia to bolster its weak central government from al-Shabab’s insurgency.

Al-Shabab spokesman Ali Mahmoud Rage in a message earlier this week threatened Kenya with an unrelenting war unless its citizens embrace Islam and the government withdraws its troops from Somalia, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist groups.

Kenya has managed to stop the frequency of al-Shabab attacks in its capital, Nairobi, and major towns, but human-rights groups say the government uses methods such as extrajudicial killings that can fuel revenge attacks.