/ 14 June 2007

Missing Kenyan cops killed at Somali border

Two Kenyan police officers believed to have been kidnapped by Islamist fighters have been found murdered on the border with Somalia, police said on Thursday. ''At 7.30am [local time] this morning, the two officers were found murdered on a hill about 500m inside Kenya,'' Kenya police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe said.

Two Kenyan police officers believed to have been kidnapped by Islamist fighters have been found murdered on the border with Somalia, police said on Thursday.

”At 7.30am [local time] this morning, the two officers were found murdered on a hill about 500m inside Kenya,” Kenya police spokesperson Eric Kiraithe said.

”Initial investigations show that they were murdered elsewhere and dumped at the scene.”

A local Somali reporter said nomads in the region had found the bodies well inside Somalia.

”One of them told me that when he was watering his camels this morning, he found the bodies of two men with Kenyan police uniforms,” journalist Mohamed Aden told Reuters from the area. ”Kenyan security forces have arrived and taken the bodies away.”

The pair vanished on Sunday on the remote border, where tensions are running high over the arrest of scores of suspected Somali Islamists trying to enter Kenya after they were routed from Mogadishu in January by Somali and Ethiopian troops. — Reuters