Three killed as gunmen attack bus near Kenya’s border with Somalia

NAIROBI — At least three people were killed near Kenya's south-eastern border with Somalia on Thursday when gunmen ambushed the bus they were travelling in, a government official said.

The bus was travelling from the coastal region of Lamu to the town of Malindi when gunmen opened fire.

"Three people have been killed during the attack but we are trying to establish how many people were in the bus," said Lamu county commissioner, Irungu Macharia.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack.

Attacks along the Kenya-Somalia border by Al Shabaab militants are common, notably targeting security forces with roadside bombs.

In their November report, a UN panel of experts on Somalia noted an "unprecedented number" of homemade bombs and other attacks across the Kenya-Somalia border in June and July last year.

Al Shabaab have also carried out large-scale attacks in Kenyan urban areas, most recently the assault on the upscale DusitD2 hotel complex in Nairobi on January 15 2019 in which 21 were killed.

The group began targeting Kenya after it sent troops into Somalia in 2011 to help combat the terrorists, who have been fighting since 2007 to topple a fragile, internationally-backed government in Mogadishu.

Despite a decade-long fight led by African Union peacekeepers, Al Shabaab are still able to launch deadly attacks in Somalia. A car bomb in Mogadishu on Saturday killed 81 people.