A multi-agency security team on Sunday dismantled two makeshift al Shabaab camps inside Boni Forest in Lamu county.
The team comprising military officers, rural border patrol police unit and the regular police found 19 rounds of ammunition, foodstuff, solar panels and clothes.
Northeastern regional commissioner Mohamed Birik said that officers surveilling the forest came across the camp at Wakabheley, 25kms inside the forest.
Birik said that the security officers ambushed the militants who managed to escape “but sustained heavy casualties from our security officers”.
He spoke to the press in his office yesterday.
Birik said the militants were using the camp as a launching ground to attack parts of Ijara, Holugho and Lamu.
In Mandera, an operation in Tawaduba in Fino discovered foodstuff, clothes and shoes suspected to belong to the militants.
The administrator thanked the security officers and the residents for partnering to enhance security.
“The militants should know that we are ahead of them. We will smoke them out of their hideouts and make sure that they are nowhere near our borders,” Birik said.
He said the incidents should jolt security officers and wananchi to act because the militants are planning attacks in the borders areas.
“We should be on the lookout and report any suspicious people in our midst,” Birik said.
Birik further cautioned locals that those sympathetic to al Shabaab operatives and other criminals would face stern action.
“The government will continue working round the clock to ensure that the lives and property of Kenyans are protected. Anybody who tries to compromise that will be dealt with firmly,” he said.
A month ago, security officers patrolling the expansive forest stumbled upon jerricans full of foodstuff that had been buried at the edge of the forest in Holugho.
The containers that had been exposed by runoff water due to the April rains contained rice, sugar, cooking oil and beans.
(edited by O. Owino)
