Kenya claims destruction of al-Shabaab bases

The Kenyan air force claims to have destroyed two al-Shabaab camps in Somalia, in the first major military response since the Islamist group massacred students at a Kenyan university last week.

Al-Shabaab denied the camps were hit, saying the airforce bombs fell on farmland. Gunmen from the al- Qaeda-aligned group slaughtered 148 people on Thursday when they stormed the Garissa University College campus, some 200km from the Somali border.

Jets pounded the camps in the Gedo region on the other side of the border on Sunday, Kenya Defence Forces spokesman David Obonyo said.

“Our aerial images show the camps were completely destroyed,” he said, though cloud cover made it difficult to estimate the death toll.

The mission was part of efforts to stop al-Shabaab fighters from those camps carrying out cross-border raids into Kenya, Obonyo said.

The militant group has killed more than 400 people on Kenyan soil in the last two years, including 67 during a siege at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall in 2013, piling political pressure on President Uhuru Kenyatta that intensified with last week’s killings.

Kenya has struggled to stop the flow of militants and weapons across its 700km border with Somalia, and the violence has also damaged the economy by scaring away tourists and investors.

Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al-Shabaab’s military operations spokesman, told Reuters that none of its camps were damaged in Sunday’s raid, and that the fighter jets had instead struck farmland.

“Kenya has not targeted any of our bases,” he said.

The rural Gedo region of Somalia is difficult to reach and reports about the raid could not be verified independently.

One of the four gunmen in the Garissa attack was the son of a Kenyan government official from Mandera county, which borders Gedo. Abdirahim Abdullahi, an ethnic Somali, was reported missing by his father after he crossed into Somalia to join al-Shabaab.

Kenyatta said on Saturday that the planners and financiers of Islamist attacks were deeply embedded within Kenyan society and urged the Muslim community to do more to root out radicalisation.