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Dozens of Somali extremists wielding automatic weapons attacked the small Kenyan coastal town of Mpeketoni on Sunday night, killing at least 48 people.
In the course of an assault that began around 8pm as town residents were watching World Cup matches on TV, gunmen rampaged through the streets, assaulting the police station, setting two hotels on fire and spraying bullets randomly.
The attack met little resistance from the country’s security forces and lasted until early on Monday morning.
Authorities blamed al-Shabab, Somalia’s al-Qaida-linked terror group.
A Kenyan police commander said that as residents were watching the World Cup at the Breeze View Hotel, the gunmen pulled men aside and ordered women to watch as they killed them.
The attackers told the women that that’s what Kenyan troops are doing to Somalian men inside Somalia.
A police spokeswoman said she believed that several dozen attackers took part.
The Interior Ministry said that two minivans had entered the town, whereupon militants disembarked and began shooting.
Kenya’s National Disaster Operations Centre said military surveillance planes were launched shortly afterward.
The town of Mpeketoni is about 60 miles from the Somali border and 360 miles from the capital, Nairobi.
The nearby town of Lamu is a Unesco World Heritage Site and the country’s oldest continually inhabited town.
The region saw a spate of kidnappings of foreign tourists in 2011 that became part of Kenya’s motivation for attacking Somalia.
Since those attacks and subsequent terror warnings tourism has dropped off sharply around Lamu.