Somalia and Kenya must boost security cooperation between them, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said Friday, as he offered his condolences a day after “barbaric” Islamist gunmen massacred 147 students. Mohamud said he mourned the “lives of innocent students” killed in the university in the northeastern Kenyan town of Garissa, offering his “condolences to the families of those who have died in this attack by the merciless terrorists.” The attack on Thursday was claimed by al-Qaida-linked Shebab fighters, with all four of the gunmen detonating suicide vests after killing 147 people in the day-long siege. Mohamud said in a statement that the killings showed “the need to reinforce the anti-terror cooperation between the two countries, with the aim to eliminate this menace from the region.” Kenya has been hit by a wave of grenade and gun attacks, often blamed on sympathizers of the Shebab and sometimes aimed at police targets, since the army crossed into southern Somalia in 2011 to attack Islamist bases, later joining the African Union force fighting them. AU chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma on Friday said the killings were “cowardly”, and praised Kenya for “its outstanding contribution to the African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the huge sacrifices made towards stabilizing that country.”