Four people including three police officers have been killed in a suspected attack by Al-Shabaab jihadists in a Kenyan town near the border with Somalia, police said.

The explosion occurred on Monday at a hotel near a police station in Mandera, northeastern Kenya, an area often targeted by the Somalia-based group.

Police said several other people were wounded.

“We suspect the involvement of Al-Shabaab in this incident,” a police officer told AFP on Tuesday.

“A major security operation is going on and an investigation on the involvement of people they are working with locally.”

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Local media also reported that two police reservists were killed in a weekend raid by suspected Al-Shabaab fighters in Lamu County, on Kenya’s northern coast.

The East African nation is a major contributor to an African Union force backing Somalia’s central government in its fight against Al-Shabaab and has suffered a string of deadly retaliatory assaults.

After a relative lull in violence, the Al-Qaeda linked group has staged several attacks in Somalia during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, including a siege on a hotel in the capital Mogadishu that killed three people.

Somalia’s beleaguered government launched a major offensive against the Islamists in August 2022, joining forces with local clan militias.

Although the government has reported some success, with swathes of territory in central Somalia recaptured, Al-Shabaab claimed earlier this month it had taken multiple locations in the region.

AFP