Kenyan officials hailed a group of Muslims for their heroic act when they protected and saved from certain death the Christian passengers of a bus they were travelling on after they were ambushed by Islamist gunmen on Monday.

The officials pointed out that this showed that "Islam stands for peace" and that Muslims could do "selfless" acts in defending their fellowmen, including people of other faiths.

Governor Hassan Joho of Mombasa, Kenya hailed the Muslim passengers for what they did. "I wish to recognise heroes/heroines who stood firm & rescued their fellow Kenyans from extremists in Mandera City. They demonstrated to the world that Islam stands for peace. This selfless act strengthens harmonious and tolerant relations," he tweeted on Tuesday, according to the Guardian.

Governor Ali Roba of Mandera also lauded the Muslims for their "sense of patriotism and belonging to each other."

The Muslim passengers told the militants who ambushed them "to kill them [Muslims and Christians] together or leave them alone," Roba told Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper, according to the BBC. "The locals showed a sense of patriotism and belonging to each other," he added.

The attack took place in Mandera, in northeast Kenya on the border with Somalia, reports from Reuters and the BBC said.

Somali Islamist militants waiting in ambush peppered the Kenyan bus with bullets, killing two people, according to witnesses and Kenyan officials.

After the burst of gunfire, the militants belonging to the al Shabab militant group boarded the bus and ordered the Muslim passengers to split away from the Christians, but the Muslim passengers remained glued to their seats, refusing to budge, according to Abdi Mohamud Abdi, a Muslim who was among the passengers. in

"We even gave some non-Muslims our religious attire to wear in the bus so that they would not be identified easily. We stuck together tightly," Abdi said, according to Reuters.

"The militants threatened to shoot us but we still refused and protected our brothers and sisters. Finally they gave up and left but warned that they would be back," he said.

Julius Otieno, the Kenyan deputy county commissioner, confirmed Abdi's statements, saying the militants "were trying to identify who were Muslims and who were not," and that the Muslim passengers had refused to help.

Unable to identify the Christians on the bus, the militants fled, both men said.

An employee of the Makkah bus company, who had spoken to the driver involved in the attack, confirmed to the BBC that Muslims had refused to be separated from their fellow Christian passengers.

One of the victims was shot dead after trying to run away from the militants after passengers had been forced off the bus, the employee told the BBC in Nairobi.

The Somalia-based al-Shabab group later confirmed the attack. The group often carries out attacks in Kenya's north-east.

The bus was travelling from the capital Nairobi to the town of Mandera.

Last April, al-Shabab militants killed 148 people in an attack on Garissa University College, officials said.

In that attack, the militants reportedly singled out Christians and shot them, while freeing many Muslims.

Last year, a bus was ambushed near Mandera also by al-Shabab militants, killing 28 non-Muslims travelling to Nairobi for the Christmas holidays, the officials said.

Al-Shabab has been at war with Kenya ever since Kenyan forces entered Somalia in October 2011 in an effort to crush the militants.

Kenya's north-eastern region has a large population of ethnic Somalis.