REUTERS-The Islamist
group al Shabaab said on Friday its fighters killed dozens of Kenyan troops
when they attacked a remote military base in Somalia on Thursday, a
claim the
Kenyan army denied.
A spokesman
for al Shabaab, which often launches attacks on the African troops fighting
with the African Union's AMISOM force, said its fighters killed at least 57
Kenyans at the base in the southern town of Kulbiyow, near the Kenyan border.
"That is
false," Kenyan military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Paul Njuguna told
Reuters, without giving any casualty figures. "The operation is ongoing.
We are receiving updates."
In January
2016, al Shabaab said it had killed more than 100 Kenyan soldiers in El Adde, a
Somali camp near the border with Kenya. The Kenyan military never gave details
of casualties, but Kenya media reports suggested a toll of that magnitude.
"We are
pursuing the Kenyan soldiers who ran away into the woods," Sheikh Abdiasis
Abu Musab, al Shabaab's military operation spokesman, told Reuters about
Friday's attack.
"Two
mujahideen (fighters) rammed suicide car bombs into the base in Kulbiyow town
before storming it," he said, adding that alongside counting 57 Kenyan
bodies the group seized vehicles and weapons. "We have taken over the
base."
Al Shabaab,
whose assessment of casualties often differs markedly from official versions,
typically rams the entrance to a target site with a car or truck bomb so fighters
can storm in.
The group,
which once ruled much of Somalia, wants to topple the Western-backed government
in Mogadishu and drive out the peacekeepers made up of soldiers from Kenya,
Djibouti, Uganda, Ethiopia and other African nations.
Driven out
from the capital Mogadishu in 2011, al Shabaab has been fighting for years to
impose its strict interpretation of Islam on Somalia.
African Union
and Somali troops have driven it from major urban strongholds and ports, but
they have often struggled to defend smaller, more remote areas from attacks.
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