Kenya: Police intercepts bomb-laden vehicle linked to al-Shabaab

Authorities in Kenya have revealed that police have intercepted a car with improvised explosive devices, foiling a planned terrorist attack in the coastal city of Mombasa.

The Kenya National Disaster Operations Center said in a tweet late Monday night that officers from the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit arrested two men that were in the car in the Changamwe area in Mombasa.

Kenya has suffered a wave of attacks since October 2011 when the government sent its troops into Somalia to fight an al-Qaeda-linked insurgent group known as al-Shabaab. The al-Shabaab vowed to avenge Kenya’s military incursion into Somalia and claimed responsibility for the September 21 terror attack on an upscale mall in Nairobi in which at least 67 people were killed by gunmen.

The east African country’s top security chiefs have warned of “increased threats of radicalization” from home-grown groups, singling out Mombasa’s Musa mosque as a specific center encouraging what they call extremism.

Intelligence officials had previously raided the mosque and accused officials of recruiting fighters for the al-Shabaab.

Source: Newswires