Islamist Shebab gunmen storm Kenya village

Islamist gunmen raided a village in northeastern Kenya, the interior ministry said Friday, the latest in a string of brazen attacks by the Somali-led, Al-Qaeda affiliated insurgents.

There were no casualties reported in the remote village, close to the porous border with Somalia, and some 80 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of regional capital Garissa.

"Security forces on Thursday evening thwarted an attempted attack at Yumbis village," interior ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka said in a statement Friday.

"Security forces swiftly mobilized and engaged the militants in a gun battle, no casualties were reported."

In April, Shebab gunmen massacred close to 150 people, most of them students, in a dawn attack on a university in Garissa.

Two days before this latest raid on Yumbis village Shebab militants briefly took control of a mosque in Garissa, delivering a hardline sermon to captive worshippers.

Thursday night's raid is the latest in a series of attacks and massacres in Kenya's northeast and its Muslim-majority coastal areas. In 2013 Shebab gunmen launched an assault on the Westgate shopping mall in the capital Nairobi that left at least 67 dead.

The Shebab has warned of a "long, gruesome war" unless Kenya withdraws its troops from Somalia, where they have been fighting the Islamists since 2011.