Al-shabbab gunmen abducted 12 women

Al-Shabaab militants claimed responsibility for the overnight attack on their radio station Andalus, but said they had in fact murdered 20 people.

This afternoon it also emerged that 12 women had been taken, according to the BBC.

The alleged kidnappings are an echo of Boko Haram's devastating raids in Nigeria earlier this year, which led to 270 schoolgirls being taken from their homes.

But in a surprising turn of events, Kenya's president Uhuru Kenyatta later said that despite al- Shabaab's claims, 'domestic political leaders' were behind the massacres, not Islamic extremists.

Majembeni - the area in which the 15 bodies were discovered - is close to the village of Mpeketoni, where 53 people were brutally killed in a raid on Sunday while they watched the World Cup.