There were conflicting reports over the number of deaths following heavy fighting between Kenyan troops and Al-Shabaab militants in southern Somalia on Thursday night.The Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) maintained that only one of their soldiers had died following the fighting but the Islamist militia claimed they had killed eleven Kenyan troops and damaged three armoured personnel carriers belonging to KDF during the fighting in the Somali town of Beles Qooqani.
“On 29 Dec 2011 at 1900hrs, in Tabda area of Beles Qooqani, KDF soldiers raided an Al-Shabaab position killing five Al-Shabaab and many suspected wounded,’ read a statement released by the Kenya military spokesman Major Emmanuel Chirchir on Friday.
“Following the raid one of our soldiers got critically injured and succumbed to his injuries. Four are receiving medical attention on the ground,” Maj Chirchir added.
But a website frequently used by the militants claimed that they had killed eleven Kenyan soldiers during a Thursday evening ambush on a KDF convoy near Beles Qooqani.
The website further claimed that the militants had laid an ambush on the Kenyan troops by exploding an improvised explosive device (IED) on an armoured personnel carrier belonging to the KDF.
This, the militants claimed, forced the Kenyan soldiers to stop in order to survey the damage. It is at this point that the Al-Shabaab sprayed them with bullets, killing 11 KDF soldiers, claimed the Islamist website.
MSF shootings
But in a quick rejoinder, Maj Chirchir termed the website an Al-Shabaab propaganda tool.
“That is Al Shabaab propaganda. What happened is that we attacked an Al-Shabaab base in Qooqani and unfortunately, lost one soldier in the exchange. We did not lose eight men as they claim,” he said.
Kenya’s Nation newspaper, which carried the report, said it could not independently establish the reports from both sides.
Meanwhile, two foreign doctors with the medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) were shot dead on Thursday evening by a gunman in Mogadishu.
Philippe Havet, a 53-year-old Belgian emergency coordinator, and Andrias Karel Keiluhu, known as Kace, a 44-year-old doctor from Indonesia, had been helping provide emergency medical assistance in famine-hit Mogadishu.
Havet was killed during the shooting, but Keiluhu died after surgery in hospital in Mogadishu, MSF said.
The shooting were allegedly orchestrated by a Somali MSF staffer heading the agency’s logistics department who was been made redundant. He reportedly carried a pistol to the office and shot the two men.
Source: Africareview
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