Kasala Kairu, Kenya, August 24, 2017
Photo: mailchi.mp Four Kenyan Christians were brutally murdered by Islamic Al-Shabaab militants on Friday night. Three of the brave Christians were killed for refusing to recite the Shahada—the Islamic prayer of faith which marks one’s conversion to Islam—and the fourth, the mentally challenged older brother of one of the three, was also murdered, reports World Watch Monitor.
At around 9 PM on the evening of August 18, Changawa Muthemba, in his 40s, Josepha Kasena, 42, and Kadenge Katana, 17, were rounded up by the Islamic terrorists, held at machete point, and ordered to recite the Shahada. All of the men, whom the attackers knew to be Christians, refused, and when they resisted being tied up, they were hacked to death. The terrorists then went to the home of Joseph’s brother Charo, in his late 40s, and killed him as well.
Garissa church, 2016. Photo: mailchi.mp Joseph’s wife Caroline saw everything happened and is “severely traumatized,” although their 17-year-old daughter Zawadi was out of town at the time.
Locals say the Al-Shabaab militants, affiliated with Al-Qaeda, are “deeply embedded” in local communities in coastal Kenya, near the border with Somalia, where the terrorist organization originated. Locals complain that the police are not doing anything to help the situation.
Nine men were beheaded by the group in Jima village on the southeast coast of Kenya in early July, soon after a similar attack at a police station in a nearby village that left three police officers dead, the Washington Post reports. Al-Shabaab has been carrying out attacks on Kenyan soil as retaliation for the nation’s involvement in military action against the group in Somalia. A witness to the beheadings said it appeared the militants were specifically seeking non-Muslim men.
The group has also used bombings to claim 46 lives in the same area of Kenya in recent months.
