Police: 2 dead as gunmen open fire killing university staff

A Kenyan police official says gunmen have killed two employees of a technical university in Mombasa on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast in a suspected extremist attack.

The assault occurred as President Uhuru Kenyatta campaigned in the coastal region for fresh presidential elections later this month.

Larry Kieng, the region's police chief, said Tuesday the gunmen suspected to be al-Shabab rebels from neighboring Somalia sprayed a vehicle carrying university staff and police with bullets near the campus.

The attack recalled the April 2, 2015 attack Garissa University in eastern Kenyan in which four gunmen killed 148 people, most of them students.

Somalia's al-Shabab militia has been carrying out attacks on Kenya saying they are retribution for Kenyan troops deployed in Somalia to fight the rebels.