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Reuters

Somali Islamist militants have sprayed a Kenyan bus with bullets, killing two people, but passengers said that Muslims defied demands from the attackers to help identify Christians travelling with them.
The attack took place in Mandera, in northeast Kenya. A year ago, al Shabaab gunmen stormed a Nairobi-bound bus in the same area and killed 28 non-Muslim passengers execution-style.
Abdi Mohamud Abdi, a Muslim who was among the passengers in Monday’s incident, said that more than 10 al Shabaab militants boarded the bus after shooting out the windscreen and ordered the Muslim passengers to split away from the Christians, but they refused.
“We even gave some non-Muslims our religious attire to wear in the bus so that they would not be identified easily. We stuck together tightly,” he said.
“The militants threatened to shoot us but we still refused and protected our brothers and sisters. Finally they gave up and left but warned that they would be back,” he said.
In previous attacks, al Shabaab has often killed both Muslims and non-Muslims.
Abdrirahman Hussien, a 28-year-old teacher who was also on the bus, gave a similar account. He said some of the Muslim passengers gave non-Muslims head scarfs to try and conceal their identities when the bus was stopped.
An extremist entered the bus and ordered everyone to get out and form two separate groups of non-Muslims and Muslims, said Hussein. One person, a non-Muslim decided to run and was shot in the back and died, he said. He said several non-Muslims managed to group with the Muslims.
A police official who insisted on anonymity because he is not authorised to give information to the media said that before the rebels could take further action on the non-Muslims, one passenger fooled the attackers by saying that a truck full of police officers that was escorting the bus was not far behind.
The officer said the lie about the police escort prompted the extremists to order everyone back on the bus and told them to drive off.
Later, the same extremists, ambushed a truck on the same road and asked the driver whether he had seen a truck full of police officers, the officer said. They shot the truck’s passenger, a non-Muslim off-duty police officer, the officer said.
Julius Otieno, the deputy county commissioner, confirmed the accounts, saying that the militants “were trying to identify who were Muslims and who were not,” and that the Muslim passengers had refused to help.
Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military spokesman, said the group had fired shots at the bus.
“Some of the Christian enemies died and others were injured,” he said in a statement. The militants did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the role of Muslim bus passengers during the attack.
The 2014 bus attack shocked Kenya and led to a shake-up of security ministers. Since then, buses carrying passengers from Mandera have been given police escorts, but Kenya Police spokesman Charles Owino said that had not happened in this case because the bus had bypassed a police roadblock.
Owino said that in addition to the two deaths, four people were wounded.
Mandera has carried the brunt of Islamist attacks recently in Kenya. Last week al Shabaab militants carried out three attacks on security forces in Mandera.
Al Shabaab has said it will continue its attacks on Kenya until Nairobi withdraws troops from an African Union force fighting the militants in Somalia. It has also said northeastern Kenya should be part of Somalia.
Kenya’s long northeastern border with Somalia is widely considered a security weak spot. Factors include poor coordination between security services, and a culture of corruption that allows anyone prepared to pay a bribe to pass unchallenged.
Additional reporting by Associated Press


'We protected our brothers and sisters': Muslim bus passengers shield Christians from Islamist attackers

A file photo of al Shabaab militants. The Islamist fighters are suspected of responsibility for the latest attack on a bus in Kenya. Photo: Reuters

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