“As we speak now, our troops are engaging the terrorists and it’s therefore imperative that we desist from divulging details that might compromise the operational security”.
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It is expected that more bodies will be airlifted to Nairobi, as desperate relatives and friends of soldiers killed, injured or held captive on Monday thronged military bases in search of their kin.
“I would like to extend my honest condolences to the families of the gallant soldiers who lost their lives, and to the people and government of Kenya”. “We will fight them deep in their hideouts, we will smoke them out of their caves and we will follow to the end in honor of every drop of blood of our Kenyans”, he said in the Sunday statement.
In a statement Sunday, al-Shabab claimed the number of dead Kenyan troops had risen to 100.
She said on Sunday, when several injured soldiers arrived, that the Kenya Defence Forces set up counselling centres in Eldoret, Gilgil and at the Armed Forces Memorial Hospital in Nairobi.
Al-Shabab, which is aligned with al Qaeda, attacked the remote army compound in southwest Somalia early Friday after a suicide bomber rammed its gates.
President Uhuru Kenyatta has repeatedly said he would not be coerced into withdrawing Kenyan forces from Somalia, saying the troops are protecting Kenya.
Al-Shabaab, an Islamist militant group that has been fighting Somalia’s government for a decade, said it killed more than 100 Kenyan soldiers and captured 12 others in the January 15 attack.
Brisbane Times reports that the attack is the biggest assault on an African Union base since a raid on an installation at Janaale in southern Somalia on September 1.
Fighters from the group exchanged gunfire with AU peacekeepers according to a Somali military official.
The commander of Somali troops in the Gedo region, General Abbas Ibrahim Gurey, tells VOA’s Somali service that the unit’s commander was given word of a possible attack hours before the first bullet was sacked.
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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.
