How radical Islamists have over time turned Lamu into terrorists’ playground

Lamu, Kenya: Sunday’s attack on Mpeketoni was the latest assault in the Coastal region blamed on Al-Shabaab and other Islamist terror groups.

Mpeketoni lies in Lamu County, a historically unstable and insecure region with an irredentist past in the defunct Northern Frontier District.

The many military and naval bases in the region, which borders Somalia, are a testimony to this past.

In the past two decades Lamu which extends into the Indian Ocean with Faza, Lamu, Manda, Pate, Kipungani islands acquired a new security importance when the islets became a haven or conduit for Al-Shabaab and other preceding terror groups.

Abduction of Western tourists from Kiwayu Island in 2011 was one of the factors that prompted Kenya’s military intervention in Somalia. Meanwhile, slain Al-Qaeda mastermind Fazul Abdulla Mohamed, originally from Comoros, made Faza in Lamu his adopted home from where he plotted terror and recruited militants to Somalia using a false fishing company and football club.

The latest attack follows the May 25 attack on a Kenyan military convoy in which two Kenya Defence Force troops were killed 21km from Hindi in Lamu County.

Three days earlier, an Al-Shabaab spokesman Khalaf Mohamed had threatened to launch attacks inside Kenya.

 The soldiers were attacked in an ambush between Mangai and Basuba as they transported food from Hindi to Ras Kamboni military camp near the Somalia border.

500 Kenyans

A United Nations report reveals that a Kenyan militia group linked to Al-Shabaab is fast becoming a threat to security in the Horn of Africa.

Al-Shabaab, or Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, as the terror group is known in Somalia, remains a threat two years after the militants were driven out of Mogadishu.

The 5,000-member group is believed to have the support of about 500 Kenyans — a group calling itself Al-Hijra (the migration) that has grown out of the Muslim Youth Centre.

The terror attacks this year include the following:

Sunday June 15, suspected al Shabaab gunmen attack Mpeketoni and kill 48 people and injure scores.

On June 10, gunmen killed chairman of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya Sheikh Mohamed Idris in a what linked to terror ambush.

On May 25 two Kenya Defence Forces soldiers are killed after their convoy is attacked in Lamu County.

On May 23, gunmen attacked police on patrol in downtown Mombasa and freed a terror suspect who had just been detained.

The suspect escaped with handcuffs on him leaving behind a wounded police officer with shrapnel in his body and a bullet lodged in his buttocks following the 8.30pm incident.

On May 17, police intercepted a vehicle carrying two Improvised Explosive Devices at Changamwe in Mombasa in an operation that saw the arrest of two suspected terrorists.

On May 16, 12 people were killed and 70 injured in Gikomba Market, Nairobi following twin explosions.