article_snippet.sent: This would be consistent with the past practices of Al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based terror group that's claimed responsibility for the attack.
article_snippet.sent: That's what Al-Shabaab did in a December raid on a quarry in the Kenyan village of Kormey, near the Somali border, that ended with at least 36 killed.
article_snippet.sent: " Such terrorism, sadly, isn't new to the people of eastern Kenya.
article_snippet.sent: And that's largely thanks to Al-Shabaab.
article_snippet.sent: While it is based in Somalia, Al-Shabaab has made bloody incursions into neighboring Kenya -- most notoriously a 2013 siege of Nairobi's upscale Westgate Mall that left at least 67 dead.
article_snippet.sent: A primary aim of such attacks is thought to be sowing terror.
article_snippet.sent: There's also a religious undercurrent, given Al-Shabaab once and possibly future goal of creating a fundamentalist Islamic state, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
article_snippet.sent: Needless to say, A primary aim of such attacks isn't shared in most places -- particularly in Kenya, where more than 80% of citizens are Christian.
article_snippet.sent: Such violence is more likely in towns like Garissa, given Such violence location 90 miles west of the Somali border.
article_snippet.sent: What makes Thursday's attack different is what was targeted -- an institute of higher learning, presumably filled with innocent students with no direct part in the Kenyan and allied governments' fight against Al-Shabaab.
article_snippet.sent: Such an attack is more reminiscent of what other Islamist extremist groups, the Pakistani Taliban and Boko Haram, did in respectively attacking a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, and kidnapping more than 200 girls at a school in Chibok, Nigeria.
highlights_snippet.sent: Gunmen storm the Kenyan school, attacking Christians and letting Muslims go .