The Kenyan military has said its warplanes bombed
targets held by al-Qaeda-linked armed group al-Shabab in Somalia, in
retaliation for an attack on a Nairobi mall that killed at least 67
people.
The Kenya Defence Forces said on Thursday that they had destroyed a
training camp used by the members of the al-Shabab group who attacked
the Westgate Mall on September 21.
"This was part of a broader mission by the AMISOM (the UN-backed
African peacekeeping mission in Somalia), targeting where the Shabaab
were training," Colonel Cyrus Oguna, a spokesman for the Kenyan
military, told Reuters.
“Those attackers at the Westgate did their training there. We have
been monitoring this particular area over a period of time, and we moved
in when we got the green light."
The camp had more than 300 fighters, many of whom are believed to have been killed or injured, the KDF said in a statement.
Oguna said raids on the rebel strongholds would be sustained.
Kenya's military said the "major aerial offensive" in the Dinsoor
region completely destroyed the training camp at Hurguun and at least
four "technicals" - improvised fighting vehicles - and a weapons store.
Two leading members of al-Shabab were killed on Monday in a Kenyan drone strike.
However, al-Shabab denied there had been any attack.
"No military camp of ours in Somalia was air struck or attacked,"
Shabaab's senior media officer told Reuters, adding that its fighters
had attacked Badhaadhe town in the south.
Meanwhile, a top UN official has said that the war against al-Shabab
fighters in Somalia has “ground to a halt” and needed a surge of almost
4,400 more African Union troops and massive UN assistance to break the
stalemate and avoid failure.
Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told the Security Council on
Wednesday that the UN-endorsed African Union force now in Somalia, and
the Somali military, lack “the capacity to push beyond areas already
recovered” from al-Shabaab in the last 18 months.
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA
