NAIROBI, Kenya

Suspected al-Shabaab terrorists have abducted four people in northeastern Kenya, near the border with Somalia, police said on Wednesday.

The suspects crossed over from Somalia late on Tuesday night and ambushed an ambulance in Mandera county, according to a police statement.

The people abducted include two paramedics from the Lafey Sub-County Hospital, identified by police as Abdirashid Billow Hussein and Aden Dai.

The other two are a patient named Moulid Abdi and Hassan Shaaban, the driver.

They were “driven towards Somalia,” the police report said.

The incident comes after a significant decline in al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya.

The terror group, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda, has a history of abductions in the Horn of Africa.

In Kenya, the group kidnapped an Italian aid worker in 2018, followed by two Cuban doctors a year later.

Al-Shabaab has also targeted security officials, teachers, and medics in past attacks, most of which were in Mandera and Kenya’s coastal regions.

In 2011, Kenya sent its troops to fight al-Shabaab in Somalia.

The terrorist group has carried out two particularly deadly attacks in Kenya in the past decade.

In 2013, al-Shabaab terrorists killed at least 67 people during a four-day siege of a mall in the capital Nairobi.

Two years later, the terrorist group attacked Garissa University in eastern Kenya, killing more than 140 students.