At least 14 people have been killed and 11 wounded in an attack in northeastern Kenya.

 

Officials believe Somalia-based al Shabaab militants were responsible.

 

It happened in the town of Mandera and followed a similar attack last December in which 36 quarry workers were killed.

 

"People were sleeping… they just came and hurled explosives in the houses," said Mandera County Commissioner Alex Ole Nkoyo.

 

"These were al Shabaab from the nature of the attack. They used explosives and guns."

 

Nkoyo said most of the victims worked in a nearby quarry.

 

Kenya police chief Joseph Boinnet also blamed al Shabaab for the attack. "I can confirm a Shabaab attack in Mandera early this morning," he said on Twitter.

 

The Red Cross said it had taken 11 people to hospital and had sent a medical airplane to evacuate the critically-injured to the capital Nairobi.

 

Al Shabaab, which has links to al Qaeda, has been increasingly targeting Kenya over its involvement in the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia.

 

In its deadliest attack to date, in April, four gunmen killed 148 people, mostly students, at a university in the town of Garissa.

 

In 2013, members of the group ran amok at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, killing at least 67 people.

(Sky News)