A 24-year-old woman was on Thursday arrested after she was found carrying three hand grenades in a public service vehicle in Sololo area, Marsabit county.
The woman identified as Galmo Galgalo was travelling in a matatu from Moyale to Marsabit town when police flagged the vehicle and after a search, they found her handbag with the explosives.
The motive for her carrying the weapons is yet to be known but police say she is under interrogation.
Other police officers said the explosives were destined for Nairobi.
It is however not clear where they would have been used.
Her handbag also had a mobile with videos indicating a militant group in a training session, which could mean she is an active member of a terror group.
Eastern police boss Noah Mwivanda said the recovery was made by a multiagency team working in the area in the wake of reports terror groups are targeting youths there for recruitment.
“We have enhanced operations there to address the emerging menace. We will succeed with the locals’ help,” he said.
The area is seen as a hotbed of radicalism and terrorism at large and has since prompted heavy police deployments there.
Officers drawn from various special units are deployed in the entire northern region including Isiolo and Marsabit to tame the rising trend of radicalism.
The region increasingly becoming under the microscope of terror groups for recruitment.
Many young men leave there to join Al-Shabaab in Somalia after being cheated they will be given jobs there.
Government officials say they have been focusing on the region in an effort to deescalate the situation.
More funding is being channelled to the counties to mitigate the situation.
Apart from Isiolo, Kwale, Mombasa, Lamu, Wajir, Mandera, Marsabit and Nairobi have also been affected by radicalism and violent extremism.
Two weeks ago, two suspects were arrested and an AK47 rifle with 128 rounds of ammunition and two hand grenades recovered from them in Merti, Isiolo County.
This indicates the seriousness the agencies are giving the matter, which one official said points to a terror cell trying to cause havoc in the country.
Cholo Abdi Abdullahi from Isiolo was arrested in July 2019 in the Philippines for plotting to attack the USA.
He was among the few remaining in the cell that planned and attacked the DusitD2 complex in Nairobi in 2019.
According to police, he schooled St Kizito Primary in Isiolo and later joined St Paul’s Kiwanjani Secondary where he did his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exam in 2010 before he studied journalism in a private university in Nairobi.
He is believed to have later vanished to Somalia then to the Philippines.
He vanished from his home in 2016. His parents reported to police he had vanished from home.
He went to the Philippines in 2016 and enrolled at the All-Asia Aviation Academy, where he trained as a commercial pilot between 2017 and 2018.
It is not clear who was financing his studies, but officials suspect Al-Shabaab did.
In 2018, police intercepted a car that was laden with a total of 110 kilogrammes of Trinitrotoluene (TNT) explosives, five AK-47 rifles, 36 gun magazines, three modified Nokia phones, 36 unprimed hand grenades, 18 pairs of grenade primers, five military-grade projectiles, and three military knives.
Police investigations then revealed the five suspects who had the car targeted the Supreme Court as the epicentre of the bomb attack, which would have been followed by successive explosions at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre and Parliament Buildings.
They would also attack County Hall, Technical University of Kenya, Central Bus Station, Jeevanjee Gardens, Serena Hotel, the University of Nairobi, and Milimani Law Courts.
