An estimated 45 Al-Shabaab fighters ambushed Kenyan troops who were travelling from the Somali town of Tabda to Beles Qooqani, in southern Somalia, on Thursday.
The Kenyan military claimed that two soldiers were injured, one critically, while nine Al-Shabaab fighter were killed during the clash.
Spokesman of the Kenya military Major Emmanuel Chirchir said that:
‘Today, at around 11.30am, Kenyan troops came under Al-Shabaab attack, which marks the first engagement with the militia force. Al-Shabaab strength at the time of attack is estimated at 45 militants.
The attack was conducted as [Kenyan troops] was moving from Tabda to Beles Qooqani to reinforce the forward positions. Nine Al-Shabaab killed with others escaping with injuries. Two KDF troops injured, one critically. The soldiers have all been airlifted for medication’.
In a separate incident, in Mandera town, located north-east Kenya close to the border with Somalia, ’at least 8 people have been killed’, Shabelle news reported on Thursday.
According to the news:
Teachers from the ministry of education and Kenyan soldiers were among those killed in the attack.
Mohamed Abdi Nur Masud, Shabelle’s correspondent in Kenya says that the bomb attack was targeted a car traveling inside the border town of Mandera.
Kenyan military members and civilian people were onboard on the targeted car.
However, a few hours later BBC lowered the death toll to four. BBC reported:
Gunmen have ambushed a vehicle in Kenya near the border with Somalia, killing four people, reports say.
A school teacher and a government official were among the dead as the attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade, police said.
Gunmen have ambushed a vehicle in Kenya near the border with Somalia, killing four people, reports say.
A school teacher and a government official were among the dead as the attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade, police said.
Kenya blames Somalia’s militant Islamist group al-Shabab for a spate of abductions on its territory.
Its troops clashed with the militants in southern Somalia on Thursday after entering the country on 16 October.
The BBC’s East Africa correspondent Will Ross says heavily armed gunmen ambushed a four-wheel-drive vehicle in Mandera district in north-east Kenya.
Two security guards who were in the vehicle exchanged fire with the gang which then launched a rocket-propelled grenade, he says.
It completely destroyed the car and killed all four passengers – among them a secondary school headmaster and a local government official.
Kenyan soldiers have been sent to the area, our correspondent says.
Kenyan police spokesman Eric Kiraithe described it as a "banditry attack" about 110 km (70 miles) from Mandera town, the Reuters news agency reports.
But our correspondent says there is some suspicion that al-Shabab militants carried out the attack.
It is to be recalled that Reuters reported last week, citing an unnamed Kenyan security official, two Kenyan soldiers were killed and four wounded when they were ambushed by al Shabaab militants in an area close to Afmadow, southern Somalia.
Previously, on October 15, the official date of the launching of the Kenyan military offensive in Somalia, it was officially reported that five soldiers were killed due a helicopter crash shortly after takeoff from Liboli airfield, eastern Kenya.
Kenyan officials claimed to have killed at least 75 Al-Shabaab on the first few days of the military operation when they captured a couple of town in southern Somalia. The Kenyan Airforce had been bombing Al-Shabaab bases, which the Kenyans believe to have killed ‘dozens of Al-Shabaab fighters’.
On the other hand, an official of Al-Shabaab urged supporters in Kenya to stop throwing grenades and move on to bigger weapons and bombs on Thursday. Reuters reported that:
Speaking to a crowd of hundreds in Elasha [near Mogadishu], Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Abu Mansoor, one of the group’s leaders, has said that he wants to see “huge blasts” shake the Kenyan leadership and opposition forces.
The sheikh has also said that they had tried to hold talks with the Kenyan government, but that the invasions have moved them beyond the point of negotiating.
“Kenya, you have started the war and so you have to face the consequences”, the sheikh warned, promising that the militants would fight back.
Another spokesman claimed that Al Shabaab militants had already attacked and defeated a Kenyan military force near the town of Tabdo.
Reuters quoted Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Abu Mansoor as saying that:
‘The Kenyan Mujahideen who were trained by Osama in Afghanistan, stop throwing grenades at buses. We need a huge blow against Kenya. Hand grenades hurled can harm them but we want huge blasts’.
In a related development, Kenyan media reported that ‘Kenyan forces were on Thursday preparing an onslaught on Burgabo, a town 120 kilometres from Kismayu, a bastion of the extremist group, Al-Shabaab’.
According to the news:
The [Kenyan] troops were said to be about seven kilometres outside Burgabo.
Conquering this town is a key objective of the Kenyan forces as it would serve as a launching pad for an onslaught on the port city of Kismayu, which is the hub of the terror group’s activities.
Kismayu is a smugglers’ haven and the revenues from it have funded terror groups and the warlords who have kept Somalia at war for 20 years.
“Everything is on course and we plan to push farther ahead in our operation today,” a source within the military told the Daily Nation, on condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to speak to journalists on the operation.
See the map below for the location of the towns mention (the troop movement indicated in the map is five days old, though there is no much progress since then.)
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