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KENYA-US-BRITAIN-SOMALIA-UNREST
Three held for trying to enter British army camp: Kenyan police
NAIROBI, Jan 6, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Kenyan police have arrested three men who
tried to force their way into a British military camp in central Kenya,
according to an internal police report seen by AFP Monday.
The men were arrested at 5pm on Sunday, just hours after Al-Shabaab
Islamists stormed onto a US-Kenyan military base in the coastal Lamu region,
near the border with Somalia, killing three Americans.
The report said officers “managed to arrest three terrorist suspects who
had earlier in the day tried to force their way into British Army Camp but in
vain.”
The camp, near the town of Nanyuki 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of
Nairobi, is used by the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) under an
agreement with Kenya for training British troops in hot and rugged terrain.
The trio’s images had been “captured by CCTV and circulated,” it said.
Investigators following up leads “found them near Nanyuki police station
where they arrested,” it said.
Marcus Ochola, police chief for the Rift Valley Region, said the trio were
not armed.
“The three suspects are being interrogated to establish their motive,” he
said.
Kenyan police are on high alert around the country after Somalia’s Al-
Shabaab stormed Camp Simba in Lamu, destroying several aircraft and killing
three American citizens in their first strike on a hard target in Kenya.
The militants began targeting Kenya after it sent troops into Somalia in
2011 to join an African Union peacekeeping force seeking to combat the
militants who have been trying to topple an internaitonally-backed government
in Mogadishu for over a decade.
The Al-Qaeda-linked group has in the past carried out bloody sieges
against civilians in Kenya, such as the upmarket Westgate Mall in 2013 and
Garissa Univerity in 2015.
The uptick in tensions comes just days before the one-year anniversary of
an attack on a Nairobi hotel complex which left 21 people dead.
A separate police report on Monday said a Canadian citizen of Somali
origin had been arrested in the suburb of Eastleigh in the capital while
taking pictures of a nearby airforce base.
According to Britain’s ministry of defence website, BATUK consists of
around 100 permanent staff and 280 on “short tour” assignments.
Its job is to provide “demanding training to exercising units preparing to
deploy on operations or assume high-readiness tasks.”
Under the agreement with Kenya, up to six infantry battalions per year
carry out eight-week exercises.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1900 hrs