Six people were killed and homes torched in a grisly attack by suspected Al-Shabaab fighters in a coastal region bordering Somalia, police and government officials said on Monday.
One man was beheaded and five were shot or burned to death in the assault on a village in Lamu County which began late Sunday and dragged into early Monday, police said.
Lamu County Commissioner Irungu Macharia said the attackers were suspected to be from Al-Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant group based across the border in Somalia.
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But he said investigators were also looking into other motives, including a possible land dispute.
“We will explore all the angles,” he told AFP. “We have security teams pursuing the attackers and so far no arrest has been made.”
“We suspect it is Al-Shabaab but that does not limit our investigations to other issues including a land tussle.”
There has not yet been any claim of responsibility for the attack.
Police said the assailants stabbed and beheaded a local elder and razed his home, and shot dead another man whose body was found on a roadside nearby.
The corpses of four other men burned beyond recognition were found with their hands bound in another location, according to a police report seen by AFP.
“Also several houses were torched within the locality and property of unknown value burnt,” the report said, adding that bullet casings were recovered.
A senior police officer in the area, which lies about 420 kilometres (260 miles) southeast of Nairobi, said four of those killed were not local residents, and that some may have been involved in land disputes, without elaborating.
Lamu County governor Fahim Twaha condemned those responsible for the “atrocities committed against innocent people”.
“It is our hope that the criminals will be apprehended soon. We are certain they will face God’s justice in athis world and in the hereafter,” he told AFP.
