This morning, members of the Somali terrorist group Al shabaab attacked a university in Garissa, a town in north-eastern Kenya that is 150km from the border with Somalia. The attackers have killed at 14 people and taken several students hostage, the BBC reports. The network’s report notes that about 30 people are wounded, and security forces have surrounded the university campus to engage the gunmen.

The terror group has claimed responsibility for the attack, with a spokesman disclosing that Muslim and non-Muslim hostages had been separated, and 15 of the Muslims had been freed.

Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Shabab have long vowed to attack members of AMISOM– a Kenya led AU-backed group of countries charged with retrieving the terrorists’ control of parts of Somalia. The militants have since regularly targeted Kenya, the most deadly of which came in 2013 when the terrorist group killed not less than 64 persons in an attack on a Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.

Witnesses said today’s attack began after five masked gunmen stormed the university and began firing indiscriminately. A policeman at the scene told Reuters news agency that some students had been taken hostage. “We can’t tell how many but they are many since the college was in session,” the unnamed policeman is quoted as saying.

Fleeing students took shelter in nearby homes source: BBC
Fleeing students took shelter in nearby homes source: BBC

The Kenyan Red Cross told the AFP news agency that about 50 students had been “safely freed”, but an unknown number were still being held.

On Twitter the police said that security forces were now trying to flush out the gunmen, and urged people to stay away from the area.

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