Kidnapped Kenyan officials released after two months, minister says

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

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

Local media reported that al Shabaab had taken the chiefs across the border into Somalia.

Murkomen said the chiefs were in the hands of Kenyan officials 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, as local administrators had suspected at the time.

Al Shabaab has been fighting for years in Somalia to topple the central government and establish its own rule based on its strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law, and frequently conducts cross-border attacks in Kenya.

(Reporting by Humphrey Malalo; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Bernadette Baum)