Al Shabaab fighters attacked a remote Somali army base and entered a nearby town close to the border with Kenya today, saying they had killed dozens of Kenyan soldiers in an African Union force supporting the government during the assault.
Advertisement
Kenya said a search and rescue operation was underway in Somalia on Sunday as Al-Qaeda-linked militants claimed to have killed over 100 Kenyan soldiers in Friday’s attack on an African Union base.
Omamo said the government has established support facilities for the families of the fallen soldiers and those who were injured at the KDF barracks in Eldoret, Gilgil and Nairobi.
Kenyan Defence Minister Raychelle Omamo said Kenya was striking back and would pursue the attackers.
Shebab spokesman Shebab spokesman Abdiaziz Abu Musab claimed to have killed 63 Kenyan troops in the pre-dawn attack, but this could not be immediately verified.
“Our priority now is to make sure that we conduct the search, rescue and recovery for the ones who are not in the camp but are elsewhere”.
“We will hunt down the criminals involved… our soldiers’ blood will not be shed in vain”, he said.
“We will fight them deep in their hideouts”.
General Samson Mwathethe, chief of the defence forces, said Friday’s attack struck the Somali National Army base and an AMISOM base that was located in the same place, near El Adde, a town in the southwestern Gedo region.
Kenya police during Westgate attack.
The base in southwest Somalia was attacked by Shebab fighters early on Friday morning, in the latest incident of an AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) base being overrun by the militants.
The group has been slowly pushed out of most of Somalia’s major cities, but continues to launch guerilla attacks within the country.
“The spate of extra-judicial killings carried out by the Kenyan authorities against Muslim leaders and scholars in Kenya, the systematic detention and harassment of innocent Muslims and the recent discovery of mass graves in Mandhera are all indicative”, the statement added.
Advertisement
President Uhuru Kenyatta described the loss as heartbreaking.
