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Kenya announces administrative, security personnel reshuffle

Kenyan Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery (AFP)

The Kenyan government has announced plans to implement drastic changes in its administrative and security personnel in an attempt to contain the rising threat of terrorism in the East African country.

On Wednesday, Kenyan Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said that new police chiefs and county commissioners were appointed for Nairobi and other strategic counties of Mandera, Wajir and Garissa near the border with restive Somalia.

The police chief of the violence-wracked port city of Mombasa also changed in the recent reshuffle, reports added. Mombasa has recently witnessed the increasing activity of Takfiri elements who are trying to encourage the Kenyan youth to join the ranks of the al-Shabab militant group.

The reforms will "strengthen efforts to combat the threat of terrorism and the creeping threat of violent extremism, bring an end to the menace of cattle rustling and enhance the campaigns against illicit alcohol, drug trade and substance abuse,” Nkaissery stated.

The minister further noted that the reshuffle is "crucial to responding effectively to the current security threats facing us.”

Kenya has been grappling with a worsening security crisis as the deadly violence fueled by the Somalia-based al-Shabab group has spilled over into neighboring Kenya.

Family members are overcome with grief after learning that a relative was killed by al-Shabab militants during an attack on the Garissa University College campus, Nairobi, April 5, 2015. (AFP)

 

Back in April, al-Shabab militants stormed the Garissa University College campus and took hundreds of students hostage. The terrorist attack left 148 students and security forces dead and 79 others injured.

Al-Shabab insurgents also carried out the Westgate shopping mall massacre in Nairobi in September 2013, when four gunmen killed at least 67 people in a four-day-long siege.

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

Somalia has been the scene of deadly clashes between government forces and al-Shabab since 2006.


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