Kenya says its forces kill 57 Islamist insurgents in Somalia

NAIROBI, March 2 (Reuters) – Kenyan soldiers killed 57 Islamist militants in fighting in southern Somalia on Wednesday, a military spokesman said.

Kenyan troops under the African Union command used artillery and helicopter gunships against al Shabaab fighters in Afmadow, a town about 100 km (60 miles) inland from the port of Kismayo, spokesman Col. Joseph Owuoth said in a statement.

“In the onslaught, 57 al Shabaab militants were killed and unknown number injured,” Owuoth said, adding that five gun-mounted pickup trucks known as “technicals” were destroyed.

The account could not immediately be independently verified.

Somalia has been torn apart by civil war since 1991 and now a drought threatens to tip the Horn of Africa nation into famine. Last month parliamentarians elected a new president who vowed to stamp out al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab.

The insurgency wants to topple the government and impose its own strict interpretation of Islam on Somalia. It ruled most of south-central Somalia until 2011, when it was driven out of Mogadishu by African Union troops.

Despite the loss of territory, al Shabaab still carries out major gun and bomb attacks.

In January, its fighters attacked a Kenyan military base in the southern Somali town of Kulbiyow, near the Kenyan border. Kenya said nine soldiers died, while al Shabaab said it killed at least 66.

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 military did not release casualty figures from that attack, but media reports supported al Shabab’s death toll.

(Reporting by George Obulutsa; editing by Katharine Houreld and Andrew Roche)

 

source Reutres