AFP
Monday, January 23, 2012
Kenyan troops clashed with Somalia's Al-Qaeda linked Shebab
militants in southern Somalia, the latest attack in a three-month long
push forward against insurgent bases, officials said on Monday.Two
Kenyan and one Somali soldiers were killed during an attack late on
Sunday on hardline Shehab positions at Delbio and Hosingo, said Kenyan
army spokesman Major Emmanuel Chirchir, who claimed Shebab gunmen had
retreated.
Kenya "unfortunately lost two of its personnel while
TFG (Somali government) lost one," Chirchir said, adding that 11 Shehab
fighters were killed in the attacks, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) from
the Kenyan frontier.
None of the casualty reports could be
independently verified, and the Shebab have repeatedly dismissed Kenyan
claims that it has killed large numbers of its forces as propaganda.
Kenya
sent troops across the border into Somalia in October to battle the
extremist Shehab it blamed for a spate of attacks on home soil, and is
fighting alongside Somali pro-government forces.
The Shebab
insurgents control large parts of central and southern Somalia but are
facing increasing pressure from government forces and regional armies.
Armies
from neighbouring countries are converging on the Shebab -- Kenyan
forces in the south, Ethiopian soldiers in the west, and an African
Union force in Mogadishu made up of 10,000 troops from Uganda, Burundi
and Djibouti.
At the weekend, a Shebab fighter was killed in an
airstrike in Afgoye, a town hosting thousands of refugees west of the
Somali capital Mogadishu, forcing civilians to flee the area Monday,
residents and officials said.
"People are returning to Mogadishu for security reasons," Said Mohamed Hassan, a Somali security official, said.
"Al-Shebab
commanders and their Al-Qaeda allies will be targeted wherever they are
in Somalia, including the Afgoye corridor and that is why people are
now avoiding living in areas under their control." he added.
On
Saturday, a Shebab foreign fighter was killed in an air raid, the
group's spokesman Ali Mohamud Rage said, identifying him as Hilal Al
Barzawi from Lebanon with British citizenship.
"The people in
Afgoye corridor are afraid of the aerial bombardments, there are many
Al-Shebab commanders here and they could be targeted. Hundreds of people
decided to move back to Mogadishu," said Sakariye Osmail, who returned
to the capital.
The Horn of Africa country has been ravaged by a
nearly uninterrupted civil war since the 1991 ouster of president
Mohamed Siad Barre sparked vicious bloodletting by rival militias
fighting for power.