Oil tankers at Kenya Pipeline Company depot in Eldoret. Police are now
escorting the tankers to Kampala following reports that they were
targeted by terrorists. PHOTO/JARED NYATAYA
Security
has been heightened in different parts of the country following reports
of a planned terrorist attack using a vehicle laden with improvised
explosive devices.
Security officials said they were
monitoring activities of suspected terrorists who could be having a
“dirty bomb” or a vehicle laden with improvised explosive devices to
launch a terror attack in the country.
Security agents
have intensified both covert and overt operations especially in Nairobi
and Mombasa even as Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Lenku directed
additional 500 officers be sent to the two regions.
The
“dirty bomb” vehicles are suspected to have been part of a Toyota 4X4
intercepted in Mombasa this month and found laden with six bombs that
was safely defused by explosives experts.
The bombs were packed with enough power to bring down a multi-storey building and cause massive civilian casualties.
Both
Kenyan and FBI agents are racing against time to locate and disable the
bomb vehicles also known as Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices
(VBIEDS).
Kenya on Tuesday restricted all refugees on
its soil to two designated camps in the wake of a weekend attack on a
church near Mombasa that claimed six lives.
Kenyans
were asked to report any refugees or illegal immigrants outside the
overcrowded camps - Dadaab in the east and Kakuma in the northwest - to
the police.
The latest developments emerged as police
in Nairobi arrested four terror suspects including a doctor in a
residential apartment at Pipeline estate, Embakasi.
In Mombasa police were on Wednesday given shoot to kill orders in the ongoing crackdown against suspected terrorists.
The
order by Mombasa county commissioner Nelson Marwa came only three days
after hooded gunmen opened fire on worshippers at the Joy in Christ
church in Likoni where they killed six people and wounded at least 15
others, including a boy identified as Satrine Osinya who has a bullet
lodged in his skull. The boy was on Tuesday airlifted to the Kenyatta
National Hospital in Nairobi for surgery.
In Eldoret, fuel tankers are now being given police escort to their destinations in Uganda after terror threats to the country.
The
tankers are being escorted by Ugandan police after intelligence reports
indicated that there were terror plots that had targeted tankers.
Security
sources at the border who did not wish to be named, said they had
received information at the police headquarters stating that there had
been planned attacks by terrorists in major places in Kampala.
The
report stated that the attackers had targeted major public gathering
places, churches and other government installations within Kampala and
the attacks would be carried out through the use of fuel tankers.
This
made the police to take measures to ensure that fuel tankers were
secured from the point of entry to the time they reach their destination
or exit points to other countries.
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