NAIROBI: Six people have been been killed and homes torched in a grisly attack Monday by suspected Al-Shabaab militants in a Kenyan coastal region bordering Somalia, police and government officials said.

One man was beheaded and five others shot or burned to death in the early morning attack in a village in Lamu County about 420 kilometres (260 miles) southeast of Nairobi, police said.

Lamu County Commissioner Irungu Macharia said the attackers were suspected jihadists from Al-Shabaab, the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group based across the border in Somalia.

“Our security forces are pursuing them, and we urge support from locals to help us because when we work together we succeed,” he told AFP.

Police said the attackers stabbed and beheaded a local elder and razed his home, and shot dead another man whose body was found on a roadside nearby. The corpses of four other men burned beyond recognition were found with their hands bound in another location, according to the police report seen by AFP.