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Kenyan police foil terror attack in border town

06 May 2014 02:46 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Kenyan police on Monday thwarted a terror attack in the border town of Garissa after an Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) was detected in a primary school where children were playing, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The IED, which was planted at the school's play ground and neatly wrapped in a 20 litre jerrican, was obviously targeting school children playing in the field, said the police.

"We believe the master minders of this deadly object were targeting school children who normally play around after classes, lucky enough members of the public noted its presence and in turn informed us before and we acted swiftly," regional CID commander Musa Yego told journalists in Garissa.

Yego said the explosion could heard around a radius of 10 km from the scene where the IED was detonated by bomb experts of the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF).

The impact of the explosive device formed a big crater on the ground with the shrapnels spreading all over the place.

"This could have cost many innocent lives of Kenyans. We want to thank members of the public who were quick to report to us. We are appealing to them to continue with the same spirit if we are to ensure that peace prevails in Garissa town," said Yego.

The latest incident came after police recovered an AK rifle with 21 rounds of ammunition at In Ifo 1 refugee camp in Dadaab district on Sunday night.

The detonation of the IED in Garissa comes just a day after three people were killed and 82 others injured by bombs planted in two commuter buses in Nairobi.

Since Kenya sent troops across the border into Somalia in October 2011, northern, eastern and parts of Nairobi and Mombasa have been hit by a series of blasts, many targeting local security forces and humanitarian workers.

Several attacks believed to have been carried out by Al-Shabaab militants have occurred in Mandera, Wajir, and Garissa and Dadaab districts of northern Kenya even as the military reports gains against the Islamist group by capturing their military bases and killing scores of them.