Kenya's interior minister and police chief were removed from their posts on Tuesday, hours after Somalia's Shebab rebels carried out a fresh massacre in the north-east 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 Shebab rebels stormed into a quarry near the border town of Mandera shortly after midnight, and police and officials said they weeded out non-Muslims and shot them in the head, while some of the victims were also beheaded. The Shebab 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 the rebels executed 28 people who were 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, vowed Kenyan troops would stay put in Somalia, where they are now part of an African Union forces battling the Shebab and supporting the war-torn country's internationally-backed government.
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