Security heightened over car bomb threat
Oil tankers at Kenya Pipeline Company depot in Eldoret. Police are now escorting the tankers to Kampala following reports that they were targeted by terrorists. PHOTO/JARED NYATAYA
What you need to know:
- The “dirty bomb” vehicles are suspected to have been part of a Toyota 4X4 intercepted in Mombasa this month
- Both Kenyan and FBI agents are racing against time to locate and disable the bomb vehicles
Security has been heightened in different parts of the country following reports of a planned terrorist attack using a vehicle laden with improvised explosive devices.
Security officials said they were monitoring activities of suspected terrorists who could be having a “dirty bomb” or a vehicle laden with improvised explosive devices to launch a terror attack in the country.
Security agents have intensified both covert and overt operations especially in Nairobi and Mombasa even as Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Lenku directed additional 500 officers be sent to the two regions.
The “dirty bomb” vehicles are suspected to have been part of a Toyota 4X4 intercepted in Mombasa this month and found laden with six bombs that was safely defused by explosives experts.
The bombs were packed with enough power to bring down a multi-storey building and cause massive civilian casualties.
Both Kenyan and FBI agents are racing against time to locate and disable the bomb vehicles also known as Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIEDS).
Kenya on Tuesday restricted all refugees on its soil to two designated camps in the wake of a weekend attack on a church near Mombasa that claimed six lives.
Kenyans were asked to report any refugees or illegal immigrants outside the overcrowded camps - Dadaab in the east and Kakuma in the northwest - to the police.
The latest developments emerged as police in Nairobi arrested four terror suspects including a doctor in a residential apartment at Pipeline estate, Embakasi.
In Mombasa police were on Wednesday given shoot to kill orders in the ongoing crackdown against suspected terrorists.
The order by Mombasa county commissioner Nelson Marwa came only three days after hooded gunmen opened fire on worshippers at the Joy in Christ church in Likoni where they killed six people and wounded at least 15 others, including a boy identified as Satrine Osinya who has a bullet lodged in his skull. The boy was on Tuesday airlifted to the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi for surgery.
In Eldoret, fuel tankers are now being given police escort to their destinations in Uganda after terror threats to the country.
The tankers are being escorted by Ugandan police after intelligence reports indicated that there were terror plots that had targeted tankers.
Security sources at the border who did not wish to be named, said they had received information at the police headquarters stating that there had been planned attacks by terrorists in major places in Kampala.
The report stated that the attackers had targeted major public gathering places, churches and other government installations within Kampala and the attacks would be carried out through the use of fuel tankers.
This made the police to take measures to ensure that fuel tankers were secured from the point of entry to the time they reach their destination or exit points to other countries.
