NAIROBI: Somalia’s Islamic extremist rebels, Al Shabab, attacked a bus in northern Kenya at dawn on Saturday, singling out and killing 28 passengers who could not recite an Islamic creed and were assumed to be non-Muslims, Kenyan police said.

Nineteen men and nine women were killed in the bus attack, said Kenyan police chief David Kimaiyo.

Al Shabab claimed responsibility for the killings through its radio station in Somalia saying it was in retaliation for raids by Kenyan security forces carried out earlier this week on four mosques at the Kenyan coast.

Kenya’s military said it responded to the killings with airstrikes later Saturday that destroyed the attackers’ camp in Somalia and killed 45 rebels.

The bus travelling to the capital Nairobi with 60 passengers was hijacked about 50 kilometres from the town of Mandera near Kenya’s border with Somalia, said two police officers.

The attackers first tried to wave the bus down but it didn’t stop so the gunmen sprayed it with bullets, said the police. When that didn’t work they shot a rocket propelled grenade at it, the officers said.

The gunmen took control of the vehicle and forced it off the road where they ordered all the passengers out of the vehicle and separated those who appeared to be non-Muslims — mostly non-Somalis — from the rest.

George Ochwodho, a non-Muslim head teacher of a private primary school in Mandera, survived the attack. He was travelling home for the Christmas vacation since school had closed.

Ochwodho said that the passengers who did not look Somali were separated from the others. The non-Somali passengers were then asked to recite the creed. Those who couldn’t recite the creed were ordered to lie down. Ochwodho was among those who had to lie on the ground.

Two gunmen started shooting those on the ground; one gunman started from the left and other from the right, Ochwodho said. When they reached him they were confused on whether either had shot him, he said.

Ochwodho lay still until the gunmen left, he said. He then ran back to the road and got a lift from a pick-up truck back to Mandera where he was rushed to hospital. He spoke from a hospital bed where he was being treated for shock.

Seventeen out of the 28 dead were teachers according to the police commander in Mandera county.

A shortage of personnel and lack of equipment led to a slow response by police when the information was received, said two police officers.

They said the attackers have more sophisticated weaponry than the police who waited for military reinforcements before responding.

Kenya has been hit by a series of gun and bomb attacks blamed on Al Shabab, who are linked to Al Qaeda, since it sent troops into Somalia in October, 2011.

Authorities say there have been at least 135 attacks by Al Shabab since then, including the assault on Nairobi’s upscale Westgate Mall in September, 2013 in which 67 people were killed.

Published in Dawn, November 23th , 2014