Two staff killed as gunmen open fire at Kenyan university
Gunmen have killed two employees of a technical university in Mombasa on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast in a suspected extremist attack, police said.
The assault occurred as President Uhuru Kenyatta campaigned in the coastal region for fresh elections later this month.
Larry Kieng, the region's police chief, said the gunmen, suspected to be al-Shabab rebels from neighbouring Somalia, sprayed a vehicle carrying university staff and police with bullets near the campus.
The incident recalled an attack on Garissa University in eastern Kenya in April 2015 in which four gunmen killed 148 people, most of them students.
Somalia's al-Shabab militia has been carrying out attacks in Kenya saying they are retribution for Kenyan troops deployed in Somalia to fight the rebels.
Kenya is one of six African countries that contribute troops to the African Union force in Somalia to fight al-Shabab which is waging an insurgency against the UN-backed government to establish a state based on strict Shariah law.
Al-Shabab is the most potent threat to east Africa's stability, having regained territory in parts of southern and central Somalia and carrying out frequent attacks in Somalia's capital and in Kenya, according to the US State Department.
The 22,000 troops in the African Union force pushed al-Shabab out of most of Somalia's cities and towns but the rebels continued to hold territory in southern Somalia where the extremist group "gained time and space needed to grow, regroup and recruit new fighters", said the report.
AP
