Kenya al-Shabab massacre: Kenyatta replaces security chiefs

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President Uhuru Kenyatta: "We will not flinch or relent in the war against terrorism"

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has replaced his interior minister and police chief following a massacre by Islamist group al-Shabab.
The president asked Kenyans to unite, and said: "We will not flinch in war against terrorists." Kenya's police chief David Kimayo stood down, while Interior Minister Ole Lenku was dismissed. Al-Shabab earlier killed 36 quarry workers in the Mandera region, near the Somali border. The group attacked the workers around midnight on Monday as they slept in tents at the quarry in Kormey, 15km (nine miles) from the north-eastern town of Mandera. The non-Muslim workers were shot dead after being separated from the Muslims. "This is a war against Kenya and Kenyans," Mr Kenyatta said on national TV on Monday. "It is a war that every one of us must fight." A driver who visited the scene of the attack, Ali Sheikh Yusuf, told the BBC most of the victims appeared to have been lined up, and shot in the head, at close range. He said four were beheaded inside their tents, while three appeared to have escaped to Mandera town. Map Al-Shabab said it carried out the attack, blaming the involvement of Kenyan forces in Somalia "and their ongoing atrocities therein, such as the recent air strikes on Muslims". The group put the number of killed at 40, higher than official accounts. Kenya's Red Cross said that security personnel and one of its own teams were at the scene soon after the attack. Al-Shabab has stepped up its campaign in Kenya since 2011, when Kenya sent troops across the border to help battle the militants. Only last week, al-Shabab killed 28 people in an attack on a bus targeting non-Muslims in the same area. In one of the worst attacks on Kenyan soil, 67 people were killed last year when four gunmen took over the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi. In recent months, dozens of people have been killed in a series of shooting attacks in coastal districts. Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku and police chief David Kimaiyo had both come under pressure from the opposition and some in the governing party to resign as a result of the security situation. Hundreds of people sought refuge at a military airstrip in the Mandera region last week, fearing a fresh assault by al-Shabab.