At about 2am on Tuesday, officers at Mandera's Lafey Police Station received a phone call from a member of the public reporting an alleged abduction.
The caller said suspected Al-Shabaab militants had surrounded herders at Wantey Dam and were demanding ransom for their release. According to police, one of the herders managed to escape and later informed the caller about the incident.
The militants were allegedly demanding three goats per person or Sh6,000, or alternatively one camel per person, for the release of the herders.
The five victims were identified as Jibril Salat Ali, Noor Rashid Issack, Abdirahman Noor Alo, Noor Muhumed Gabane and Mohamud Ahmed Salat, all residents of Alungu Division in Lafey Sub-County. A police report said local elders had been engaged to negotiate for their freedom.
Lafey Deputy County Commissioner Festus Chepkwony confirmed an incident had occurred but downplayed it, saying the herders returned home later in the day.
"What was reported was not really an abduction. We treated it as panic among family members after they failed to reach their kin who had crossed into Somalia to look after their livestock. All the five reported missing persons returned home by evening," Mr Chepkwony said on phone.
Keen not to admit that an abduction had taken place, Mr Chepkwony, who is also chairman of the Lafey Sub-County Security and Intelligence Committee, acknowledged that clan elders are sometimes used to negotiate with militants.
"We have clan elders used in negotiating whenever there's a situation that requires their intervention. But in this one, we did not use them," he said.
According to Mr Chepkwony, the herders had strayed into an area in Somalia without a communication network, causing panic among their families back home.
However, a local source who spoke on condition of anonymity said the five herders had been picked up from a watering point where they had taken their livestock.
"Wantey Dam is an area where livestock get water and is currently inhabited by Al-Shabaab militants extorting locals. A week ago, security officers were killed there as they carried out an operation," the source said.
On July 29, five security officers from the Special Operation Group (SOG) were ambushed and killed in the area, while a reinforcement team was also hit by an explosive device.
Shabaab finance chief killed
Al-Shabaab militants during a training in Somalia.
Photo credit: File
The abduction comes barely two days after Adam Ibrahim, alias Dhagajun, Al-Shabaab's national finance chief, was killed in an airstrike in Jilib on Sunday evening.
Born in the Gedo region and educated in Kenya, Ibrahim had served in financial positions within the terror group across Middle Juba, Lower Juba and Gedo before being promoted to national finance overseer.
Sources familiar with the group's inner workings said he was also a close associate of Ahmed Diriye, the Al-Shabaab emir who has commanded the organisation since 2014 and who has a $10 million bounty on his head.
The group operates checkpoints on major roads, taxes imports at ports it does not control, imposes a 2.5 percent tax on property and businesses, runs protection schemes for charcoal smugglers, takes a cut from livestock markets, and extracts forced contributions from humanitarian organisations attempting to operate in areas under its influence.
Those who refuse to pay face improvised explosive device attacks, assassinations, or the abduction of their children. Women who cannot pay have reportedly been told to hand over their sons.
Ibrahim had inherited this financial machinery from Abdullahi Hassan Abdi Osoble, better known as Abdullahi Wadaad, who was killed in an airstrike in Kuunya Barrow, Lower Shabelle, on January 23, 2026.
Somalia's National Intelligence and Security Agency confirmed Wadaad's death four days later, describing him as the group's chief finance officer, who oversaw extortion and illegal tax collection across Lower Shabelle and Banadir.
Ibrahim was killed after a vehicle he was travelling in was hit by an airstrike in Kawaanka district of Jilib at about 7.50pm on Sunday. In the area, the man who counted money for Al-Shabaab was known by several names, including Dhagajun, Muhsin and Ukash.
Porous Kenya-Somalia border
A section of the fenced Kenya-Somalia borderline.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
In North-Eastern Kenya, Al-Shabaab's financial networks have long exploited the porous Kenya-Somalia border, hawala money transfer systems, and charcoal and sugar smuggling routes running through Lamu and Garissa.
Last year, suspected Al-Shabaab militants abducted five chiefs in Mandera, forcing the national government to intervene. The chiefs, who were kidnapped in Mandera County in February 2025, were released in April 2025 after two months in captivity inside Somalia.
