NAIROBI, Dec. 2 -- Somali Al-Shabaab militants said on Tuesday in a statement that they were behind the killing of 36 Kenyans in Mandera county in northern Kenya.

In a statement issued from southern port city of Kismayo in Somalia, the islamist group said its fighters raided a quarry workers'camp at Koromey area in the outskirts of Mandera county at midnight and killed those workers.

"In another successful operation carried out by the Mujahideen, nearly 40 Kenyan crusaders met their demise after a unit from the Saleh Nabhan brigade raided them in the midnight on Monday at Koromey on the outskirts of Mandera," Al-Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said in the statement.

The militants said the latest attack was part of a series of attacks planned and executed to serve as a response to Kenya's occupation of Muslim lands and their ongoing atrocities against Muslims in the Kenya's coastal city of Mombasa and Somalia.

Earlier Tuesday, Kenya police confirmed that at least 36 construction workers were killed in the morning in northern Kenya.

Mandera County Police Commander Noah Mwivanda said the workers were killed at 1 a.m. local time Tuesday (2200 GMT Monday) by a group of gunmen while sleeping at a quarry at Koromey, about 20 km from Mandera county bordering Somalia.

He said initial investigations have revealed that all the construction workers, all of them men, were killed after being ambushed by heavily armed militants.

Kenya has witnessed several attacks since 2011 when it participated in fights against the Al-Shabaab militants in Somalia.

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