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Col Cyrus Oguna of Kenya Military/FILE

Kenya

Attack claims 2 Kenyan soldiers, 11 Shabaab

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 23 – Two Kenyan soldiers were killed in Somalia on Sunday in a major attack that also left 11 Al Shabaab militants dead.

Military Spokesman Emmanuel Chirchir said a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) soldier was also killed in the air strike.

“Yesterday at around 2300hrs KDF/TFG conducted a raid on an Al Shabaab camp where 11 were killed,” the army spokesman said adding “out of the raid KDF unfortunately lost two of its personnel while TFG lost one.”

Chirchir said several arms were recovered from the slain Al Shabaab militants.

On Saturday, Cyrus Oguna of the Defence Forces said the militia had resorted to using women wearing bras fitted with explosives to further their cause.

Oguna said that the militia was getting desperate and had started using unconventional means to strike back at the Kenyan army.

He added that the outlawed group was also using propaganda, such as killing civilians and claiming they are KDF officials, as their new weapon.

“We are all aware that Al Shabaab for a long time prohibited women from wearing bras. The phenomenon that is emerging now is that Al-Shabaab is using these women who are in their ranks and supplying them with bras that are fitted with explosives and this is something that is critical even to homeland security,” he explained.

He said that they were also dressing up as civilians in a bid to fool both the Somali people and the Kenya Defence Forces.

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“They now dress like herders and in one incident, they fired at our troops and our troops fired back and they complained that we were firing at civilians,” he observed.

“They are trying to make us look bad by trying to engage non combatants. However, Al Shabaab dressing like me at one minute does not make him a civilian when he dresses otherwise the next minute,” he pointed out.

He however expressed confidence that the surveillance of the Kenya Army was fool proof and could not be defeated by the tactics.

“Later on Al Shabaab did claim that they killed four KDF soldiers and they burnt a vehicle. Logic would prevail that Al Shabaab would not burn a vehicle because they will need to use it and therefore, that explained the cheap propaganda that they are trying to use,” Oguna said.

He said that Kenya’s battle to crush the Al Qaeda-linked insurgency had reached the halfway mark and said its forces struck several command centres and logistic facilities operated by the Al Shabaab group.

“The war is almost half lost; Al Shabaab is now facing serious challenges as far as command and control is concerned and logistical support,” he said. “It will not take a very long time before Al Shabaab is completely buried.”

Oguna said that in the past week, Kenyan forces had destroyed four of Al Shabaab’s organisational camps, some in the areas of Jilib and Bibi.

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