Kidnapped Kenyan officials released after two months in captivity

Five local Kenyan officials have been released from captivity, Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said on Monday, two months after they were kidnapped by gunmen in the northeast of the country.

Gunmen believed to be from the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab terrorist group reportedly abducted the village chiefs, who were government-appointed local officials, in Mandera county in February near the border of Somalia, where the group is based.

"We decided to work together with the community, and to work with the county government of Mandera... and this process has borne fruit," Murkomen told journalists, according to footage by broadcaster NTV Kenya seen on X.

Murkomen said the chiefs were in the hands of Kenyan authorities and that they would be "arriving home any time soon," though he did not say whether he thought al Shabaab was responsible for the kidnapping.

However, at the time of the incident, local administrators had suspected that al-Shabaab terrorists were behind the kidnap. The group has not commented on the abduction.

Al Shabaab has been fighting for years in Somalia and frequently conducts cross-border attacks in Kenya.