Al-Shabab, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said about 100 Kenyans were killed, and that armaments and military vehicles were seized following the attack.
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Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke on Monday said the attacks by “remnants of Al-Shabaab” would not prevent the government from eradicating the group.
Jihadist websites in Somalia claimed that 12 Kenyan soldiers were captured.
The African Union is still verifying the number of casualties and Kenyan authorities haven’t specified how many of its soldiers died.
“We will fight them deep in their hideouts, smoke them out of the caves, follow them to the end in honour of every drop of blood of fellow Kenyans”, said he.
She also disclosed that other soldiers who were injured were being treated at a hospital in Wajir and would be airlifted to Nairobi should need for specialised treatment arise.
“KDF’s priority as is our norm in military operations was to degrade the enemy which we have already done through a concerted effort of both land and air assets in the last 48 hours”, Mwathethe said.
The attack is described as the worst since Kenya sent its troops to battle Al-Shabaab in southern Somalia in 2011.
But while Judge Gleeson said that was correct, he said he also partly accepted their lawyers’ characterisations of the men as freedom fighters who only joined al-Shabaab in order to return to war-torn Somalia to fight against Ethiopia.
Neither AMISOM nor the Kenyan government has released a death toll, but the Kenyan secretary of defense said the soldiers affected by the attacked are “a company size force”.
Paul D. Williams is an associate professor of global affairs at The George Washington University in Washington and has written about the African Union Mission in Somalia.
Mwathethe said the attack was launched against a company-sized force of soldiers, without making clear if this was the size of the Kenyan contingent in the area or the mixed force. On 17 January, Al-Shabaab’s Radio Andalus broadcast the voices of two alleged Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) soldiers captured in the attack.
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Calls for the Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta, to withdraw the Kenyan forces from Somalia, have been futile as he believes that the troops are protecting Kenya.
