Muslims shield Christians when Al-Shabaab attacks bus in Kenya
A group of Kenyan Muslims shielded the Christian passengers and
told the attackers they were prepared to die together.
The
Muslim passengers, who were mostly women, told the Islamic militants to kill
them all or leave them alone, witnesses said.
The bus was headed to the city of Mandera, near the border with
Somalia and Ethiopia.
The
journey is such a security risk that most buses travel with a police escort.
In
this case, however, the police car broke down and the bus continued on its
journey, Joseph Nkaissery, Kenya's interior cabinet secretary, said.
A
few hours later, the militants attacked.
Al-Shabaab, a Somali group the United States has
designated as a foreign terrorist organization, wants to turn
Somalia into a fundamentalist Islamic state. It has launched a series of
attacks in Kenya, since Kenyan forces went into Somalia to battle the
extremists in 2011.
Its
goal: sow division in the border regions of Kenya and Somalia, where many of
the people are ethnically Somali, analysts say.
Among
Al-Shabaab's most brutal acts was the raid on Garissa University
College in April that
left nearly 150 people dead. Witnesses described how gunmen asked students to
recite verses from the Quran. If they couldn't, they were killed.
The
group regularly storms buses, particularly this time of the year -- one of the
busiest travel seasons in the nation. Throngs make their way to relatives'
homes for the holidays, with buses and other public transportation packed.
In one such attack last year,
they raided a bus and shot dead 28 people who failed to recite Quran verses.
In the Monday attack, the gunmen ordered Muslim passengers to
come out of the bus and separate themselves from the Christians.
There
were more than 100 passengers on board.
The
Muslim passengers refused.
They
gave the Christian women their hijabs and helped others hide behind bags in the
bus, passenger Abdiqafar Teno told CNN.
"They
told them, 'If you want to kill us, then kill us. There are no Christians
here," he said.
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Christian man who tried to run away was captured and shot dead, Teno said. The
driver of a truck, which was trailing the bus, was also killed.
The
gunmen left, but warned they would return.
Nkaissery,
the interior cabinet secretary, told reporters security forces were in
"hot pursuit of the criminals."
Then
he commended the actions of the Muslim passengers.
"We
are all Kenyans, we are not separated by religion," he said. "We are
one people as a nation. And this is a very good message from my brothers and sisters
from the Muslim community."
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