Kenyan Warplanes Bomb Somalia

US-backed Kenyan Defense Forces have launched a naval and ground assault on the southern Somalia port city of Kismayo. Washington has assembled a 17,000-person army to occupy the Horn of Africa nation., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Kenyan warplanes bomb al Shabaab strongholds in Somalia

By James Macharia, Reuters

The Kenyan military said its warplanes bombed targets held by al Qaeda-linked Islamists in Somalia on Thursday, in retaliation for an attack on a Nairobi mall that killed at least 67 people.

The Kenya Defence Forces said they destroyed a training camp used by the members of the al Shabaab Islamist group who attacked the Westgate Mall on September 21. A Kenyan drone strike killed two leading members of al Shabaab on Monday.

"This was part of a broader mission by the AMISOM (the U.N.-backed African peacekeeping mission in Somalia), targeting where the Shabaab were training. Those attackers at the Westgate did their training there," Colonel Cyrus Oguna, a spokesman for the Kenyan military, told Reuters.

"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 over 300 fighters, many of whom are believed to have been killed or injured, the KDF said in a statement. Oguna said raids on the Islamists' strongholds would be sustained.

Al Shabaab 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.
Kenya's military said the "major aerial offensive" in the Dinsoor region completely destroyed the training camp at Hurguun and at least 4 "technicals" - improvised fighting vehicles - and a weapons store.