Kenya says German citizen among gunmen who attacked military base | Reuters

Kenya says German citizen among gunmen who attacked military base | Reuters

A German citizen was among gunmen from the Somali Islamist group al Shabaab who attacked a military base on Kenya's northern coast on Sunday, the Kenyan interior ministry said on Friday.
Eleven Somali al Shabaab militants and two Kenyan soldiers were killed when the militants carried out the early morning raid on the military base near the town of Baure in Lamu County, near the Somali border.
"We have confirmed that the German was indeed among the militants in the recent attack in Lamu, and we have sent out his picture as a wanted suspect," Mwenda Njoka, interior ministry spokesman, told Reuters on telephone.
A police document seen by Reuters named the man as 42-year-old Martin Muller, also known as Abu Nusaibah, and said he had probably been wounded.
Foreign fighters often use an array of aliases.
Kenyan police also released a photograph of Muller, showing a bearded white, middle-aged man wearing military fatigues.
Earlier this week, Kenya said a British citizen, Thomas Evans, also known as Abdul Hakim, was killed in the Lamu raid. In his mid-20s, Evans had converted to Islam aged 19 and later joined al Shabaab.
Al Shabaab, which seeks to overthrow the Western-backed Somali government and impose its strict interpretation of Islamic law, has frequently targeted neighboring Kenya in recent years, saying it is retaliating for Kenya's participation in an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia.
In April, al Shabaab militants raided a university in the northern Kenyan city of Garissa, killing nearly 150 students, and in September 2013 militants killed at least 67 people in an attack on Nairobi's upmarket Westgate mall.
(Reporting by Humphrey Malalo and Joseph Akwiri, writing by Drazen Jorgic)