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Five Kenyan police killed in roadside bomb blast near Somalia border

Five Kenyan paramilitary police officers were killed Wednesday, June 6 after their vehicle struck a homemade landmine in Liboi, close to the eastern border with Somalia, a government official said.

“It was an IED [improvised explosive device] attack and we have lost five police officers,” Harun Kamau, deputy county commissioner in Dadaab, said, adding three others were injured.

Kamau said the officers from the General Service Unit were traveling in a police truck which was destroyed by the explosion.

The use of improvised explosive devices against police and military patrols in the border region is relatively common.

Over the past year, al-Shabaab insurgents based in Somalia have claimed several such attacks, killing dozens of Kenyan police and soldiers.

On May 3, four people were killed in Mandera, which borders Somalia in an attack blamed on al-Shabaab. The four men, all non-Muslims who were not from the area, were attacked at a remote quarry, with some of them shot dead and others hacked with a machete.

Nine Kenyan police officers were killed by roadside bombs on consecutive days in Liboi in 2017.

Meanwhile, on May 7, nine Kenyan soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Somalia in an attack claimed by al-Shabaab. Kenya has deployed troops in Somalia since 2011 as part of the African Union’s AMISOM force.

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With reporting from AFP

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