Daily Nation Newspaper

ROADSIDE BOMB KILLS KENYAN POLICE OFFICERS

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- At least eight Kenyan police officers have died after their car hit a roadside bomb near the Somali border.

Eleven people were in the car when it hit the device in east Wajir county. The fate of the others is unclear.

No-one has admitted planting the explosives.

Unnamed officials told AFP news agency that the police had been pursuing suspected al-Shabab Islamist militants fighting Somalia's government and its backers, including Kenya.

The al-Qaeda-linked group has been trying to overthrow the Somali government for years.

The insurgents have lost many of their stronghold­s, including areas of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

However they control large rural swathes of Somalia and continue to wage guerrilla war against local authoritie­s.

Al-Shabab has also carried out several attacks and kidnapping­s in Kenya, vowing retributio­n for the country's involvemen­t with Anisom -a 20,000-strong African Union force helping to support the government in Somalia.

In a separate incident, at least eight people were killed by a bomb which exploded at a checkpoint near Somalia's parliament in Mogadishu.

Al-Shabab said it carried out the attack and another one on a road leading to the city's airport, in which nobody died.

Meanwhile in Yaounde, Cameroon’s government said yesterday that separatist­s in its restive English-speaking region had detonated an improvised explosive device that killed four police and wounded six.

“The government condemns in the strongest terms this criminal act, perpetrate­d by armed bandits and terrorists with no faith or law,” the statement said. It also said the attack occurred along a road near the district of Eyumojock in the south west of the country late on Saturday.

There was no immediate reaction or claim of responsibi­lity from any separatist group.

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