NAIROBI, Kenya — The heavily armed men roused the sleeping quarry workers in the dead of night.
As in previous such attacks, the gunmen singled out the non-Muslims by asking them to recite the Islamic creed. Then they killed 36 of them — most with a gunshot to the back of the head, according to a survivor who hid nearby during the slaughter.
The Islamic militant group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the methodical massacre in northern Kenya early Tuesday — 10 days after a similar attack on a bus that killed 28 — and it prompted President Uhuru Kenyatta to shake up his national security team amid public outrage over the continuing violence.
“I know we are all under a lot of pressure, but I appeal to each one of us: This is not a time to be cowed by the enemy,” Kenyatta said in a nationally televised address.
“This is a war we must win,” he said. “We will not flinch or relent in the war against terrorism in our country and our region.”
Al-Shabab has been fighting for years to establish hard-line Islamic rule in neighboring Somalia. The al-Qaida-linked group has vowed to strike against Kenya for sending its troops into Somalia, and it has claimed it was behind the bus attack and the siege at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi last year that left 67 dead.
The group has suffered a series of setbacks this year. It lost control of a key coastal stronghold in Somalia to government and African Union troops in October, and its spiritual leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, was killed in a U.S. airstrike Sept. 1.
But the Nov. 22 bus attack and the quarry killings Tuesday showed that the group is still capable of bold incursions into the east African country.
Al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said the quarry attack was a response to Kenya’s deployment of troops to Somalia in 2011 and to alleged atrocities committed by the Kenyan army there. Al-Shabab said a recent airstrike had killed innocent people and destroyed their property.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Washington vigorously condemned al-Shabab’s “continued cowardly, brutal targeting of civilians.” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned the attack, and reaffirmed U.N. support for Kenya’s efforts to fight terrorism, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
