One Kenyan policeman was killed and two others injured in an explosion suspected to have been caused by a roadside bomb at the Dadaab refugee camp near the border with Somalia, news reports citing local officials said Monday.
The explosion reportedly struck a police vehicle inside the refugee camp, killing the driver instantly. The other two injured in the incident were Kenyan police officers who were inside the targeted vehicle.
Although no one has claimed responsibility for the attack yet, Kenyan officials blame the Somalia-based al-Shabaab Islamist insurgent group for the attack. They believe the militants who detonated the bomb had entered the camp disguised as refugees.
The Dadaab refugee camp is said to be the biggest of its kind in the world, housing an estimated 450,000 people who have fled the ongoing famine and the continued conflict in Somalia. The UN say's the region is currently witnessing the world's worst humanitarian situation.
Somalia is currently facing its worst drought in more than six decades. Although some regions in Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Uganda have also been hit by drought, the situation in southern Somalia is compounded by Islamist insurgency and acute poverty.
Al-Shabaab is Somalia's most prominent and influential Islamist militant unit and is branded a terrorist organization by the United States and most of the international community. The outfit is the military wing of the Islamist movement ousted by Ethiopia-backed Somali forces in 2006.
Hundreds of Kenyan troops are currently in Somalia as part of a cross-border operation aimed at driving the al-Shabaab militants away from the border separating the two nations, following a wave of abductions along the border.
The Kenyan incursion is also part of a cross-border search for four kidnapped Europeans, including two humanitarian aid workers, believed to have been taken to Somalia by their captors. One of them subsequently died in captivity. Kenyan officials blame al-Shabaab militants for the kidnappings.
However, the Islamist group denies any involvement in the recent abductions in Kenya and has threatened to respond to the Kenyan incursion by launching suicide attacks in Kenya like the 2010 Ugandan suicide bombings that killed 76 people and left dozens injured. The group has already carried out several bombings in Kenya.
The Kenyan parliament recently voted to allow the country's troops to join African Union's ongoing UN-mandated military mission in Somalia aimed at providing military support to the UN-backed interim Somali government against the Islamist militants.
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