Kenya president says coastal assault ‘not an Al-Shabab terrorist attack’

Attacks along the Kenyan coast that killed at least 63 people over two nights were the work of "local political networks," the country's president said Tuesday, seemingly dismissing claims by feared Somalia-based armed group Al-Shabab that it was behind the assaults.

"The attack in Lamu was well planned, orchestrated and politically motivated ethnic violence against the Kenyan community," President Uhuru Kenyatta told the nation in an address, referring to tourist hub Lamu County, where the attacks took place.

"This, therefore, was not an Al-Shabab terrorist attack. Evidence indicates local political networks were involved in the planning and execution of the heinous crime. This also played into the opportunist network of other criminal gangs," he said.

Earlier reports, citing Kenya’s interior minister, Joseph Ole Lenku, suggested Al-Shabab fighters killed at least 15 people on Monday in a second night of attacks on Kenya's coast, barely 24 hours after an attack near the coastal town of Mpeketoni left at least 48 people dead, according to Lenku.

An Shabab spokesman said on Monday that the group killed 20 people, mostly security officers, in the overnight attack on Poromoko, a village the border with Somalia.

Sunday's assault was the biggest since the deadly Westgate Mall raid last September in the capital, Nairobi.

"The Mpeketoni raid was carried out in response to Kenyan military's continued invasion and occupation of our Muslim lands and the massacre of innocent Muslims in Somalia," Al-Shabab said.

Lenku promised on Monday to pursue the attackers. "These attacks are unfortunate, and the perpetrators must be held accountable," he said in Mpeketoni, where he was jeered by locals. "We condemn yesterday's killings and the latest attack today, where about 15 other people were killed and houses burned."

In a statement sent to Al Jazeera on Monday, Al-Shabab said the Kenyan government was "fighting a losing war" and telling tourists to stay away.

Al-Shabab said it targeted Mpeketoni on Sunday because it was originally a Muslim area that was "invaded and occupied by Christian settlers."

"The prospect of peace and stability in Kenya will be but a distant mirage," the Shabab statement said. "Brace yourself for the depredations of war and that which you have with your hands sown."

Al Jazeera and wire services. Al Jazeera's Rawyah Rageh contributed reporting.