Kenyan police thwart terror threat

Police in Kenya foiled the final stages of a plan for a major terrorist attack in the country, officials said today, arresting two people with explosive devices and a cache of weapons.

Boniface Mwaniki, the head of Kenya’s anti-terrorism police unit, said the two men arrested in a Somali immigrant area of Nairobi last night are suspected to have links with an al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group.

Police found four suicide vests, two improvised explosive devices, a cache of guns and ammunition and 12 grenades, he said.

Each of the vests had an AK-47 placed on its side and there were more than 480 bullets, meaning the terrorists were ready for deployment, he said.

The vests could be detonated remotely or by a main switch, he said.

They were similar to others used in an attack in Uganda in which 76 people were killed in July 2010. Somali militant group al-Shabab said those bombings were in retaliation for Uganda’s participation in the African Union’s peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

Kenya has suffered a spate of grenade attacks that have killed more than 50 people. Police have attributed them to sympathisers of al-Shabab in Kenya.

Al-Shabab has vowed to carry out terror attacks in Kenya in retaliation against the country for sending troops into Somalia to hunt the militants it blames for a series of cross-border attacks, including the kidnapping of four Europeans last year.