Extremists bomb Kenya hotel; 12 die

NAIROBI, Kenya — Islamist extremists struck a hotel in northern Kenya on Tuesday morning, killing a dozen people and stoking outrage from Kenyans who accused their government of not doing enough to protect them from a relentless menace.

Al-Shabab, a Somali militant group, gleefully took responsibility, saying online that it had bombed the hotel to kill infidels and that all the group’s fighters “came back to their positions safely after the operation.”

Mandera, a predominantly Muslim border town nestled between the Ethiopian and Somali frontiers, has been a frequent target for the extremists, and many of its residents have fled.

The attack happened at 3:30 a.m. at a hotel in Mandera, a town that sits at the absolute northeastern tip of Kenya. This month, Islamist militants killed six people there. Less than two years ago, Islamist militants slaughtered dozens of miners in the same area, separating the Christians from the Muslims and shooting the Christians in the head.

According to Kenyan officials, the militants detonated a powerful bomb at the hotel Tuesday when most guests were sleeping. Part of the hotel collapsed, and at least 12 people died in the avalanche of concrete and rebar. Several others were seriously wounded.

Kenya has been locked in a war against al-Shabab for five years, part of a wider effort to dislodge the militant group from Somalia. The U.S. has also jumped in, with American Special Forces expanding a covert war inside Somalia against al-Shabab, with mixed results.

In recent years, al-Shabab have lost several important cities, but at the same time, fighters continued to take over smaller towns and overrun heavily fortified African Union bases. Inside Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, al-Shabab assassins routinely kill government officials.

A few hours after the attack in Kenya, al-Shabab fighters bombed an African Union base in central Somalia and claimed to have killed more than 15 soldiers.