Suicide attacks on Sunday church stopped, Kenya police say

July 31, 2016

By David Trifunov

Residents walk through Eastleigh, a neighborhood of Nairobi known for its Somali population, walk on January 18, 2010. Kenyan police detained 300 illegal Somali immigrants during a sweep that followed a deadly protest at Nairobi’s main mosque. The raid on Eastleigh neighbourhood was carried out by the elite General Service Unit and the anti-terrorism police unit following allegations by the government that Somalia’s hardline Al Shabaab group infiltrated the demonstration.
SIMON MAINA

Police in Kenya said they’ve stopped a planned Al-Shabaab suicide attack after arresting two men and uncovering a weapons cache in a Somali neighborhood of Nairobi.

The weapons included four explosive vests with detonators, four AK-47 assault rifles and about 480 rounds of ammunition, grenades and IEDs, police representative Eric Kiraithe told Bloomberg.

Police arrested 26-year-old Kenyan Abdul Majid Yasin Mohammed and Suleiman Abdi Aden, a 24-year-old from Somalia, but are searching for eight others.

“We seriously suspect al-Shabaab and its sympathizers,” Kiraithe said, Bloomberg reported.

He said the intended targets were churches and the attacks were to happen on Sunday.

Al-Shabaab is a branch of Al Qaeda responsible for suicide bombings in Somalia and cross-border attacks into Kenya.

More from GlobalPost: Life after Al Shabaab in Somalia

Kenya has seen an increase in grenade attacks on bus stations and bars since sending troops to Somalia to root out extremists, Agence France-Presse said.

Now it seems churches are on the hit list.

“These suspects wanted to use these arms to harm innocent Kenyans during Sunday church services,” one police officer said, AFP reported.

The arrests happened in a Somalian area of Nairobi called Eastleigh, or Little Mogadishu.

The raid happened overnight after someone tipped police to the apartment where they found the men and weapons, Reuters reported.

“This is a very organized team that is ready to cause big problems in the country,” deputy police chief Moses Ombati told Reuters. “They were about to start executing their mission.”