"We lost eight police officers in this attack," North Eastern Regional Commissioner John Otieno said. "We suspect the work of al-Shabab, who are now targeting security forces and passenger vehicles."
The incident took place on Tuesday in Garissa county in eastern Kenya, a region on the border with Somalia - where al-Shabab has been waging a bloody insurgency against the fragile government in Mogadishu for more than 15 years.
Kenya first sent troops into Somalia in 2011 to combat the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militants, and is now a major contributor of troops to an African Union military operation against the group.
But it has suffered a string of retaliatory assaults, including a bloody siege at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in 2013 that cost 67 lives and an attack on Garissa University in 2015 that killed 148 people.
In Somalia itself, al-Shabab has continued to wage deadly attacks despite a major offensive launched last August by pro-government forces, backed by the A.U. force known as ATMIS.
In one of the worst recent attacks, 54 Ugandan peacekeepers were killed when al-Shabab fighters stormed an African Union base in Somalia on May 26, according to Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni.
And on Saturday, Somali police said six civilians were killed in a six-hour siege by the militants at a beachside hotel in Mogadishu.
Forum