Two Kenyan policemen believed kidnapped by Islamist fighters were found murdered on the border with Somalia on Thursday. "The missing officers have been found dead," Kenya's north-eastern police commander, Anthony Kibucha, told Reuters.
He gave no other details, but a source at Mandera district hospital, where the bodies were taken, said they both had bullet wounds and showed signs of torture. A local Somali reporter said nomads in the region discovered the pair's remains well inside Somalia.
The two men vanished on Sunday on the remote frontier, where tensions are running high over the arrest of scores of suspected Somali Islamists trying to enter Kenya after they were routed from Mogadishu in January by Somali and Ethiopian troops.
On Wednesday, Kenyan infantry joined Somali and Ethiopian forces searching for the pair, questioning the pastoralists who criss-cross the arid region with their animals.