The BBC is reporting a group of Kenyan Muslims traveling on a bus ambushed by Islamist gunmen protected Christian passengers by refusing to be split into groups, according to eyewitnesses of the attack which took place in December 2015.
The author reports:
“They told the militants ‘to kill them together or leave them alone’, a local governor told Kenyan media.
At least two people were killed in the attack, near the north-eastern village of El Wak on the Somali border.
The Somali based al-Shabab group says it carried out the attack. The group often carries out attacks in Kenya’s north-east.
The bus was traveling from the capital of Nairobi to the town of Mandera. When al-Shabab killed 148 people in an attack on Garissa University College in April [2105], the militants reportedly singled out Christians and shot them, while freeing many Muslims.
Last year, a bus was attacked near Mandera by al-Shabab militants, who killed 28 non-Muslims traveling to Nairobi for the Christmas holidays.
‘The locals showed a sense of patriotism and belonging to each other,’ Mandera governor Ali Roba told Kenya’s private Daily Nation newspaper.
The militants decided to leave after the passengers’ show of unity, he added.”
Read more at BBC News Africa.
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