Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen has confirmed the release of five chiefs who were reportedly abducted by Al Shabaab in Northeastern Kenya. Their release from captivity comes after going missing for two good months.
Speaking on Monday, Murkomen revealed that the ministry worked closely with the locals and the county government of Mandera, to discover where the five appointed local officials were taken to.
“We decided to work together with the community, and to work with the county government of Mandera… and this process has borne fruit,” Murkomen told journalists.
Further, Murkomen assured Kenyans that the village chiefs are now in safe hands of Kenyan officials; that they’ll arrive in the country sooner and reunite with their community.
Reports by local media outlets revealed that the gunmen believed to be from the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group who abducted the village chiefs, had taken the chiefs across the border into Somalia where they detained them.
In his statement though, the CS refrained from acknowledging whether it is true that the al Shabaab group was responsible for the kidnapping of the five village chiefs or not.
Initially, the local administrators lamented that the government officials to intervene suspecting at the time that the chiefs were kidnapped by al Shabaab.
Al Shabaab has been fighting for years in Somalia to topple the central government and establish its own rule based on its strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law, and it frequently conducts cross-border attacks in Kenya
