By Boniface Ongeri, and Adow Jubat

Two people including an 8-year-old boy were killed in a suspected Al Shabaab attack at a church in Garissa town.

Three others, a mother and her two grandchildren, were seriously injured when the attackers hurled a grenade at Pentecostal Church late Saturday.

Another bomb thrown at a busy taxi rank frequented by military officers failed to explode. Both incidents happened at about 9pm on Saturday.

The second bomb could have also plunged the town into darkness as the taxi rank is near an electricity transformer.

North Eastern Police boss Leo Nyongesa said the injured are admitted in Garissa General Hospital.

An eye-witness said the victims were in their house.

The Pastor of the Church Ibrahim Makunyi said he was in his house about 100m away when he heard the explosion.

He said the bombed house belonged to the church elder.

"One of those killed, John Gikabu, 20, was a choir member and the other, Mwendwa Mutinda, 8, is the son of the church elder", he said.

A witness, Mary Nginya said that after the explosion, he heard the attackers saying "na bado. Ni mwanzo tu" Kiswahili for it is just the beginning".

Nyongesa said investigations would establish whether the grenade attack had any connections with Al Shabaab. Another grenade hurled at the church failed to explode and was collected. He said no arrest had been made yet.

Speaking from the hospital bed, the injured mother Rachel said the explosion happened when they were having meal while watching television. The two children are aged 11 and 15 years old.

The incidents are among a series of attacks over the weekend in Northern Kenya that have shocked the region.

In separate incident, suspected Al shabaab launched missile attacks on the border division of Hulugho in Ijara District.

Police said they managed to repulse the attackers on donkey carts. The attackers were targeting the Regular and Administration Police camps in the area. One of the missiles landed on the foot of a local FM radio station mast but did not explode.

The incident came hours after officers in Haldera, one of the refugee camps in the region, discovered a landmine buried in the ground.

The officers were escorting aid workers in the camps. The bomb is the second in the town after a landmine injured three security officers from the warfront in Somalia.

Alshabaab have promised retaliatory attacks to protest Keya military operation in Somalia.

Source: The Standard

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