More than 1,000 bullets, 36 grenades, 18 IEDs and 5 AK-47 rifles recovered in Merti, Isiolo

The VBIED had been built into the car and were ready for detonation.

Police killed a suspect and recovered from his vehicle a huge cache of weapons foiling a planned terror attack in Nairobi.

The recovery was made in Merti area, Isiolo County after police trailed a vehicle carrying the weapons from Somalia.

Police are yet to determine the target for the attack but an official aware of the operation said a church was the target.

More than 1,000 bullets, 36 grenades, 18 Improvised Explosive Devices and five AK 47 rifles were recovered from an SUV and two other suspects are in custody from the sting operation, police said.

There were also assortment of knives in the vehicle that the terrorists planned to use in their attacks.

The recovery took place in a remote area, almost 200 kilometers from Isiolo Town on Wednesday evening.

The VBIED had been built into the car and were ready for detonation.

Police said they had been tipped off of the planned attack before they trailed the vehicle from Somalia up to the Isiolo.

“We could not let the vehicle leave the place to Nairobi because the cache is dangerous. They were powerful,” said a police officer who attended the recovery event.

Those arrested were identified as Abdimajit Hassan Adan Keynan and Mohammed Nane Keynan aged 24 and 23 years respectively.

Two suspects however managed to escape from the scene and efforts to trace them are ongoing.

Isiolo County Criminal Investigations officer Raphael Barasa said police were on security patrol in Yamicha in Merti Town when they spotted a car hidden in a thicket raising their suspicions that it could have been dumped by Al-Shabaab militants.

“The slain man tried to engage the officers as they approached the parked car prompting action that left one suspect dead. Two others managed to escape,” he said.

A team of police was flown to Merti on Thursday to dismantle the VBIED and fly the weapons and suspects to Nairobi.

The recovery was described as a milestone in anti terror operations in the country. It’s the second such recovery after that of 2014 in Mombasa where another VBIED were seized from a suspect who had arrived from Somalia ready to detonate. The suspects targeted the ferry then.

It took the involvement of foreign terror experts to detect the vehicle and where the explosives were hidden.