Kenya nabs three more suspects over university attack

Kenya has apprehended three more suspects in connection with a recent deadly attack on a university campus, which left 148 people dead.

Mwenda Njoka, an Interior Ministry official, revealed on social media that the three suspects were arrested while fleeing the country into Somalia.

Njoka tweeted that the suspects were the associates of Mohamed Mohamud, also known as Dulyadin Gamadhere, who is an ex-teacher at one of Kenya’s seminaries and is said to be the mastermind behind the Thursday attack at Garissa University College.

Police have announced a $220,000 reward for any information leading to Mohamud’s arrest.

The three recent arrests bring the total number of the suspects apprehended in the case so far to five.

Following the university attack, al-Shabab militants, based in Somalia, claimed responsibility for it. Al-Shabab spokesman, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, said the killings were in revenge for the presence of Kenyan troops in Somalia as part of the African Union’s force fighting al-Shabab.

On Saturday, the militant group threatened to kill more Kenyan people. Al-Shabab warned Kenyan people that it would target more schools and universities as well as workplaces and homes in the country in revenge for the Kenyan government’s military operations against militants in Somalia.

The Kenyan government has vowed that it would not give in to the threats.

On April 2, al-Shabab militants stormed the university campus in the city of Garissa, located some 150 kilometers (90 miles) from the border with Somalia. The gunmen killed 148 people in the attack and injured 79 others. The attack ended after Kenyan security forces killed all the four attackers who had taken hundreds of students hostage.

Kenya’s northern and eastern regions, which border Somalia, have been the scene of violent attacks blamed on al-Shabab militants from Somalia.

Kenya currently has over 3,000 soldiers stationed in southern Somalia, where they have been battling al-Shabab. The country sent troops into Somalia in late 2011 after the militant group carried out a series of raids inside Kenya.

The al-Shabab militants, who once held the Somali capital, have been pushed out of Mogadishu and other major cities in the country by the African Union Mission in Somalia, which is largely made up of troops from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti and Sierra Leone.

Al-Shabab has carried out many deadly attacks in the past. In 2013, the militant group took many people hostage at the Westgate mall in Nairobi in a standoff that left scores of people dead.

The university killing though marks the worst carnage on Kenyan soil in decades.

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