Gunmen kidnap two Cuban doctors near Kenya

Gunmen abducted two Cuban doctors near Kenya’s border with Somalia on Friday as they were going to work, and shot dead a police officer guarding them, authorities said.

The police suspect the attackers were members of the Somalia-based Islamist militant group al-Shabab, a security source told agencies.

Last year, more than 100 Cuban medical specialists were brought to Kenya to improve the health service.

"All security agencies have been mobilized to pursue the criminals and rescue the victims," police said in a statement.

National Police Service spokesman Charles Owino said gunmen in two Toyota cars stopped the vehicle carrying the Cubans as well as two police officers in the center of the town of Mandera.

One policeman was fatally shot by the attackers, and they then “commandeered the car and the occupants crossed the border to Somalia,” Owino told a news conference.

He said the vehicle, which belonged to the Mandera County hospital where the Cubans worked, had been recovered and the driver had been detained for interrogation.

The fate of the second policeman was not immediately known.

Owino did not say who was behind the attack and took no questions.

Al Shabaab has taken responsibility for a number of attacks in the border-area town in northeastern Kenya, in which dozens of civilians and security personnel have been killed.

Al-Shabab is battling the UN-backed government in Somalia, while Kenyan troops are part of an African Union force that is supporting the government in Mogadishu.

In November, gunmen wounded five people, including two children, and kidnapped an Italian charity worker in Chakama, a small town near Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast south of the Somali border. The fate of the Italian woman is unknown.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Embassy upgraded its warning against travel in Mandera County. “Exercise increased caution in Kenya due to crime, terrorism, and kidnapping,” the warning read.