Two Christians are reported to be among three people killed after suspected al-Shabaab militants attacked a bus in Kenya on Wednesday morning.
Haji Abass, the owner of the Kenya-based Moyale Raha bus company, told The Associated Press that fighters suspected to be aligned with the Somalia-based group attacked the bus while it was carrying passengers to the capital of Nairobi from a market town near the Ethiopian and Somalian borders.
Abass said that the militants were in police uniform and tried to flag down the bus. However, the bus driver kept on going because he knew there were no police stops along the route.
At that point, the militants shot at the bus, flattened the back tires and injured the driver.
After the bus went into a ditch, militants allegedly pulled the passengers out and killed two non-Muslims and one Muslim. Two others were injured.
International Christian Concern, a United States-based advocacy organization, reports that the two non-Muslims killed in the attack were Christian men named Peter Kilnozo Musili and Kevin Onyango.
According to ICC, which confirmed the attack through a security officer based in northeast Kenya, the two men were executed because they could not recite the Islamic declaration of faith, the Shahada.
The Muslim man who was killed was named by ICC as Abdi Abinoor. ICC reports that Abinoor was killed for trying to protect the Christians.
The security officer told the nonprofit that the attack occurred in the town of Banisa in Mandera County, an area of Kenya near the Somali border with a large Somali ethnic population.
The officer said that the bus was carrying 47 passengers.
SOURCE: Christian Post, Samuel Smith
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