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Kenya's interior minister and police chief were removed from their posts yesterday, hours after Somalia's al-Shabab rebels carried out a fresh massacre in the northeast of the country.
In a televised address to the nation, President Uhuru Kenyatta also vowed his security forces will "intensify the war on terrorism" after a spate of killings in the country by the al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents.
A group of al-Shabab rebels stormed into a quarry near the border town of Mandera shortly after midnight, and police and officials said they weeded out 36 non-Muslims for execution.
Those labourers not shot as they slept were placed in lines in the dusty quarry, with insurgents shooting most in the head but also beheading others.
Their bodies were flown to Nairobi later on Monday on a military transport plane.

Al-Shabab said in a statement that their latest cross-border attack was fresh retaliation for Kenya's 2011 invasion and continued presence in Somalia, as well as its treatment of Muslims in the troubled port city of Mombasa.
The attack came just over a week after al-Shabab executed 28 people grabbed from a bus travelling from Mandera, a border town located on the frontier between Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, and the group vowed to conduct more "uncompromising, relentless and ruthless" attacks.
Kenyatta, however, said Kenyan troops would stay put in Somalia, where they are now part of an African Union forces battling al-Shabab and supporting the war-torn country's internationally-backed government.
"This is a war and a war that we must win, we must win it together," he said. "The ultimate aim of this atrocious campaign is to create an extremist caliphate."
He called al-Shabab "deranged animals" who had killed more than 800 people in attacks inside Kenya, including 500 civilians and 300 security officers.
"We will not flinch or relent in the war against terrorism in our country and our region. We shall continue to inflict painful casualties on these terrorists until we secure our country and region. Our stability and prosperity depends on a secure neighbourhood."
The Kenyan government has been under fire since last year's al-Shabab attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, in which at least 67 people were killed in a siege involving just four gunmen and which lasted four days. Worries over internal security mounted when al-Shabab rebels massacred 100 people in a string of raids against villages in the Lamu region on the Kenyan coast in June and July.
The sacked interior minister, Joseph Ole Lenku, has become a figure of public ridicule for his statements on the security situation, while national police chief David Kimaiyo has been accused of repeated lapses - contributing to dwindling public confidence in the security apparatus.
According to Kenyan media, intelligence officials had alerted police to the presence of a group of al-Shabab fighters in the northeast before last month's bus attack, but police had failed to react and were so slow in responding to distress calls that the assailants had plenty of time to escape.
Labourers in the largely Muslim and ethnic Somali northeastern regions often come from Kenya's central highlands, where Christians make up about 80 percent of the population.
Al-Shabab meanwhile boasted of having killed "nearly 40 Kenyan crusaders" in the quarry, and pledged more killings.
"This latest attack was part of a series of attacks planned and executed by the mujahedeen as a response to Kenya's occupation of Muslim lands and their ongoing atrocities," al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said.
 


	Wife and daughter of Islamic State's Baghdadi held
The Lebanese army detained a wife and daughter of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as they crossed from Syria nine days ago, security officials said yesterday, in a move seen as likely to put pressure on the self-declared “caliph”.
The woman was identified as Saja al-Dulaimi, an Iraqi, by a Lebanese security official. The Lebanese newspaper As-Safir reported she had been detained in coordination with “foreign intelligence”.
A senior Lebanese security official said Baghdadi’s wife had been travelling with one of their daughters, contradicting earlier reports that it was his son. DNA tests were conducted to verify it was Baghdadi’s child, the official said.
Reuters


Kenyan leader vows war on al-Shebab after 36 killed in execution 

Bodies of victims of the Shebab attack. Photo: AFP

Kenyan soliders gather around the bodies of victims on the ground at a quarry near Mandera, northeastern Kenya. Photo: EPA

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President Uhuru Kenyatta sacks security chiefs and vows to 'intensify war on terrorism' after Somalia extremists kill 36 in latest massacre


Kenya's interior minister and police chief were removed from their posts, hours after Somalia's al-Shabab rebels carried out a fresh massacre in the northeast of the country.
