Gunmen stormed a Kenyan police compound in a town on the border with Somalia and sprayed bullets into officers’ homes Thursday, killing two before setting more than 10 vehicles on fire, police said.

Gunmen stormed a Kenyan police compound in a town on the border with Somalia and sprayed bullets into officers' homes Thursday, killing two before setting more than 10 vehicles on fire, police said.

The attack was claimed by the Shebab, five days after operatives from the Somali group stormed a mall in Nairobi and held a four-day siege that left at least 67 dead in the worst attack on Kenya in 15 years.

"They were very brutal, they were out to kill because they were shooting directly into the houses," a police officer based in the region said of the attack in the town of Mandera. "Two police officers were killed" and at least three wounded.

"We are pursuing them, and there is a security operation that is going on after that attack that has left a lot of destruction," the area's police chief Charlton Mureithi said.

He said the attackers struck in the middle of the night when the police officers were asleep.

In a separate incident on Tuesday night, attackers also killed one person and wounded four when they hurled a grenade at a market in the town of Wajir, further south, a local police officer said.

"Fighters forces last night raided a Kenyan police base in Mandera town..., killing 2 and injuring 3 others," the Shebab said on Twitter.

"The fighters burnt down police vehicles before leaving and made away with weapons and ammunition.

Such attacks against the police and other targets are frequent along Kenya's porous border with Somalia, a region rife with banditry where unrest is routinely blamed on -- and claimed by -- the Shebab.

Kenya's Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said Wednesday that security at Kenya's borders had been heightened after the mall bloodbath.