Bomb blast at Kenyan guesthouse kills dozen

NAIROBI — A bomb blast at a guesthouse in northeast Kenya killed at least 12 people on Tuesday, in an attack claimed by Al-Shabaab militants which last hit the area earlier this month. “We have found 12 bodies so far after we managed to access the building,” a senior police officer said. “We are still combing the area with the help of anti-terrorism police and sniffer dogs in the ongoing search and rescue.” Eleven men and one woman were killed in the 3:30 a.m. (0030 GMT) blast at the Bisharo lodge, a police source said. The toll was confirmed in a government statement that said part of the building was collapsed by the blast. The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militant group claimed the attack in a message broadcast by its Radio Andalus media organization, claiming 15 were killed. “This attack is part of a series of attacks in which the Mujahideen are hunting down infidels” in northeast Kenya, the group said. It is the second Al-Shabaab strike in Mandera in three weeks. The previous one on Oct. 6 killed six people at a gated residential building that mainly housed non-ethnic Somalis and non-Muslims, less than a kilometer from the volatile Somalia border town of Beled Hawa. Mandera governor Ali Roba said the raids were designed to divide communities and destroy the economy. “This is an attack that is aimed at making sure we don’t attract investors, we do not attract a professional workforce, we do not have interaction with the rest of the country,” Roba told a press conference on Tuesday morning. — AFP