18 killed in twin attacks in coastal Kenyan county: police

Death toll has risen to 18 from the latest twin attacks in Kenya's coastal county of Lamu after some bodies were discovered early Sunday, a humanitarian agency said.

Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) said three people, two from the Hindi trading center and one from the Gamba police station, have been evacuated and are receiving treatment after unknown gunmen struck the center and the police station in Garsen, Tana Delta, on Saturday night.

"So far we have 18 fatalities, 9 from Gamba police station and 9 from the Hindi trading center. We have evacuated three persons with serious injuries and are now receiving treatment," KRCS spokesperson Wariko Jacqueline Waita told Xinhua on Sunday.

She said the general assessment of Gamba has already been completed while the search and discovery efforts were still underway in Hindi trading center where some people are still missing.

Mombasa police commander Robert Kitur said heavily armed attackers struck Gamba police station in Garsen, Tana Delta County at about 23:00hrs, killing at least 9 people before releasing a man believed to be a ringleader of the recent Mpeketoni attacks who was being held there.

According to the police, another group raided Hindi shopping center and killed at least nine people and injured several others before torching houses.

Inspector General of Police David Kimaiyo said that the attacks, which seemed to be simultaneous, came barely a month after 65 people were killed and several others injured in Mpeketoni, a largely peaceful farming community in Lamu.

"We have reports of the attacks and we have heavy presence of police there searching the attackers," said Kimaiyo, without confirming the death of a policeman who was inside the cell at the time of attack.

Police sources said the attackers killed the policeman on duty, before pulling out five people held in police cells and shooting them to death.

They further pulled out three other civilians in a lorry which had just arrived at the police station and killed them before disappearing into the bush.

Several people went to police stations to seek shelter as Somalia's Al-Shabaab group issued a statement claiming that their fighters had carried out another attack in the area on Saturday.

"The attackers came back home safely to their base," Al-Shabaab military spokesman Abdulaziz Abu Musab said.

Residents said gunfire erupted in Hindi near the popular tourist coast of Lamu on Saturday night.

The Lamu attacks are among the most deadly attacks in Kenya since last September when at least 67 people were killed during a siege at Nairobi's Westgate shopping center.

Kenya's tourism also suffered a decline in the number of tourists since September 2011 when the Somali militant group, the Al-Shabaab, kidnapped tourists in the Lamu archipelago and the Spanish volunteers.

The country has witnessed several hit-and-run grenade attacks in recent months in the capital, Nairobi, and in northern Kenya and Mombasa port city.

Kenyan authorities often blame such attacks on Al-Qaida-affiliated Al-Shabaab rebels from neighboring Somalia.