Nairobi, Feb 3 : Five Kenyan local government officials were abducted Monday in an ambush by al-Shabab terrorists in Mandera County near the border with Somalia, police have confirmed.

Mandera South Police Commander Julius Njeru confirmed the attack and said the administrators were travelling from Wargadud to Elwak town for duty when they were attacked and hijacked along the way.

The police and witnesses believe the local administrators, locally known as chiefs, were driven to Somalia because the area is near the main Kenya-Somalia border.

Kenyan President William Ruto is expected to tour the northern region this week, prompting security operations.

Njeru said a major operation was mounted after the incident in which the attackers who were waiting are said to have fled to Somalia.

Police believe the attackers had prior information on the movements of the administrators, Xinhua news agency reported.

Mandera County has been a hotbed of militants targetting locals and chiefs, with similar incidents reported in the previous years. Last year in December, a driver attached to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations was shot and killed by suspected al-Shabab terrorists in an attack in Mandera County.

Since the Kenyan military crossed into Somalia in 2011, some attacks believed to have been carried out by al-Shabab continue to occur in Mandera, Wajir, and Garissa counties of northeastern Kenya even as the military reports gains against the group in Somalia.

Kenya's northeastern region has borne the brunt of grenade and gun attacks in the last several years since Kenya took its troops to Somalia in 2011 to fight the al-Shabab militia group.

Many people, the majority of them non-locals, have as a result lost their lives with others left with permanent injuries.

The extremist group has since changed tactics and resorted to abductions and using improvised explosive devices to carry out attacks in parts of the Coast and northeastern regions, according to police.

/IANS