Al-Shabaab Attacks Quarry Workers In Kenya: 36 People Dead

According to witnesses, shortly after midnight on Tuesday, militants of Al-Shabaab, an extremist terrorist group based in Somalia, seized a workers' camp, which was located in a remote district near the Somali border. They woke the workers up from their sleep and asked them to cite the tenets of the Muslim faith. Workers who could not prove that they were Muslim were ordered to lie on the ground and then more than 10 gunmen shot them dead, reported The Guardian.

Newspapers in Kenya reported that most of the 36 victims were shot in the head and some of them were beheaded. There were several pictures on social media showing dead bodies of men lying face down on the ground, The New York Times reported.

Similar attack by the notorious extremists took place as recently as last month. On November 22, a bus heading to the capital, Nairobi, was hijacked by militants near Kenya's border with Somalia. There were 60 passengers in the bus. Attackers fired bullets and shot a rocket propelled grenade at the bus to stop it when their attempts to wave down the bus failed. After the gunmen seized the vehicle they forced passengers out of the bus and then they separated the non-Somali passengers from the rest. Militants ordered non-Somali passengers to recite the Shahada, a tenet of Islam declaring oneness with God. The ones who failed to do so were shot dead, reported The Guardian.

Al-Shabaab has been carrying out several violent attacks in Kenya in recent years, especially in the northern part, which shares a border with Somalia. Some claim that Kenya's decision to move troops into Somalia in October 2011 in an effort to establish a buffer zone between Kenya and Somalia might have backfired. Many people in Kenya blame the police and immigration officials for being corrupt and letting extremist cross the border, which leaves Kenyans vulnerable, the Guardian said.