Al-Shabab kills five Kenyan security personnel in ambush

The ambush is part of a rapid surge in cross-border attacks along Kenya’s northern frontier.

Five Kenyan security personnel have been killed while on patrol near the Somalia border in Mandera county by the armed group al-Shabab.

Kenyan police said on Wednesday that the Tuesday attack occurred just before a bomb destroyed a vehicle sent to reinforce the targeted patrol.

Al-Shabab has claimed responsibility through an affiliated media outlet, attributing the operation to its armed wing.

Tuesday’s attack was among the deadliest in a string of recent attacks along the same stretch of Mandera, in northeastern Kenya, in recent weeks, underscoring the group’s intent to continue targeting the region.

According to a Kenyan police report, a Special Operations Group patrol, an elite police “counter-terrorism” unit, came under fire near Wantey Dam, about ۶km (۴ miles) from Lafey police station, shortly after midday.

Five members of the security forces were killed in the initial assault. A reinforcement team dispatched to the scene was then struck by a roadside bomb that destroyed an armoured vehicle, though no one on board was hurt.

On July ۱۳, Kenyan forces stormed a suspected camp near the border, killing ۱۱ fighters and disrupting what officials said was a plan by around ۳۰ to attack a nearby village.

Eleven days later, on July ۲۴, gunmen struck two villages in the same district, Fino and Arabia, within an hour of each other.

Al-Shabab, an armed group linked to al-Qaeda, controls large areas of south-central Somalia and has been fighting the country’s central government for close to two decades.

Kenya has partnered with Somali authorities to contain the group since ۲۰۱۱, when Kenyan troops entered Somalia, and the group has carried out repeated cross-border attacks in both Kenya and Ethiopia since then.

A report submitted to Kenya’s parliament last November identified the corridor around Lafey as one of the main routes that militants use to infiltrate the country. It recorded dozens of security force casualties in the wider region over the previous year.

The report found that Kenya recorded ۶۱ “terror-related incidents” across Mandera, Wajir, Garissa and Lamu counties between September ۲۰۲۴ and August ۲۰۲۵. Mandera alone accounted for ۳۸ of them, making it the hardest-hit county in the northeast.

Samira Gaid, a regional security analyst at Balqiis Insights, told Al Jazeera that the said cross-border attacks have long been “a deliberate part of al-Shabab’s strategy”, dating to Kenya’s ۲۰۱۱ intervention in Somalia.

Gaid added that al-Shabab doesn’t seek to control territory in Kenya in the same way as it does in Somalia, but instead carried out attacks to “coerce Kenya into withdrawing troops from Somalia by raising the domestic cost of intervention”.

The attack comes as heads of state from countries contributing troops to the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia are due to meet later this week to deliberate on its future, following an announcement by the United States that it is cutting crucial funding for the operation.

Washington said in early July that it would end logistics support for the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia, which has backed Somalia’s army in its fight against al-Shabab, a move experts fear could threaten the viability of the peacekeeping force.