Al-Shabaab raids Kenyan military camp in Somalia
Friday January 27 2017
A Kenyan military camp in Kulbiyow, Somalia, came under heavy fire on January 27, 2017 after suspected Al-Shabaab militants attacked the base. PHOTO | GOOGLE MAPS
Barely three days after Kenyan troops from the Kulbiyow camp in Somalia attacked an Al-Shabaab base in nearby Badhaadhe township, the militants raided the Kenya military site on Friday morning.
The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) base, at a border town in lower Jubbaland, came under heavy attack and the number of casualties remains unconfirmed.
"We are under massive attack and there is massive exchange of fire," military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Njuguna told the Nation Friday morning.
According to the KDF, the militants launched the attack at 5am (0200 GMT) by driving a truck filled with explosives towards the camp.
Heavy gunfire ensued with KDF saying it killed scores of terrorists.
A Somali security official, speaking to VOA, said they had spotted two trucks laden with explosives.
“Our surveillance drones spotted the oncoming al-Shabaab fighters. We fired mortars at them but this did not stop them. They then drove two trucks loaded with explosives into the base,” the official told Voice of America.
Al-Shabaab, Reuters reports, claimed it had killed 57 Kenyan soldiers, an allegation Lt-Col Njuguna denied.
"That is false," Lt-Col Njuguna told Reuters, adding that "the operation is ongoing."
The militant group has an elaborate propaganda machinery, complete with a spokesman, that fights to advance its war against the internationally backed Mogadishu administration and its allies, including Kenya.
Kenyan soldiers are fighting the rag-tag militia under the UN-backed African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) that has lost hundreds of soldiers in camp attacks.
Besides Kenya, Al-Shabaab has attacked camps belonging to Uganda, Burundi and Ethiopia causing massive causalities.
READ: In the line of duty: Amisom loses 1,100 troops
The Kulbiyow attack comes a year after Kenya lost over 100 troops when Al-Shabaab overran a KDF camp in El-Adde on the dawn of January 15, 2016.
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