“The eye of the storm is on us,” said a Barnabas Fund contact after three Christian teachers were murdered in an attack by Al Shabaab jihadists on a primary school compound in Kenya on 13 January.
The dead teachers were Samwel Mutua, 29, Caleb Mushimbi, 28, and Caleb's cousin, 29-year-old Titus Mushimbi.
Another teacher was shot twice in the leg, and a fifth managed to escape when the militants struck the school’s staff quarters at 2 a.m. in Kamuthe, about 30km from Garissa town, on the Somali border.
The terrorist spared a female Christian teacher and a nurse with an infant child. However, they forced the nurse to recite the shahada (Islamic creed), before marching her to the dispensary where they looted medicine and other items deemed of value. Muslims believe that anyone who recites the creed has become a Muslim, even if they do not understand what they have said and do not believe it.
The gang then burned down the nearby police post, abandoned by its officers when the gunfire started, and bombed a telecommunications mast in the market place.
The murderous Al Shabaab raid was the fourth in the area in less than two weeks, claiming a total of ten lives including 4 children. “The intensity of the attacks is terrifying,” said our contact. “We appeal to the security agents to double their efforts and devise a security strategy to protect Christians and local Somalis in the region.”
One of those killed, Titus, was at the school only because the headmaster was away. The previous day, Titus had played keyboard during a Sunday service at his local church. Anxious because of the recent spate of attacks, he had asked for prayers for safety before leaving for the school. At 11 p.m. on Sunday, he spoke on the phone to his wife Ruth, a teacher at Garissa Academy, and his son, Baraka, wishing them good night.
Al Shabaab, a Somali Islamist group with links to Al Qaeda, carried out a massacre at Garissa University in which 148 mainly-Christian students died in 2015. It began its murderous campaign in Kenya in 2011 after the Kenyan government sent troops into Somalia to counter terrorist activity.
From Barnabas Fund contacts
