Al Shabab claim killing Kenyan soldiers

 By Mubatsi Asinja Habati

As a military campaign to destroy Somali militants, the Al-Shabaab, intensifies with re-entry of Ethiopia, the rebels are fighting back issuing press releases.  Now the Al Qaeda-linked rebels say they destroyed a Kenya Naval ship before killing 8 soldiers in an ambush.

But as Kenya and Ethiopia forces who seem to have a different approach to the Somalia war take the show, questions are being raised on where the new players especially Kenya in the conflict, leaves the AU-backed forces from Uganda and Burundi.

In Nairobi the Kenya government said it arrested 60 suspected Shabaab fighters as they entered the country through Uganda. The Kenya government blames the suspects for planting grenades that rocked Nairobi last month. Since the Kenya military incursion into Somalia the Shabaab have accused Kenya's soldiers of indiscriminate shelling civilians claims which they deny.

With the pressure mounted on the al-Shabaab likely to increase in the next few months we can only brace ourselves for more propaganda from all sides of the front-line in the course of the war.

Press Release

For Immediate Release

Mujahideen Naval Forces Torch Kenyan Military Ships

Mogadishu (20/11/2011) – Divisions from Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujahideen’s Naval Forces stormed and burned military ships patrolling the waters along the Somali Coast , marking the first encounter between the Mujahideen and the invading Kenyan forces at sea.

Using high-powered speed boats and operating stealthily under the cover of darkness, two divisions from the Naval Forces launched a carefully calculated attack on two Kenyan navy ships travelling between the islands of Kudhaa and Madhawo, near Kismayo, at around 0300 hours Sunday morning. In the exchange of gunfire, one of the ships was set ablaze when hit by rocket-propelled grenades, while the other ship escaped unhurt.

The Kenyan ships were reported to have been patrolling the waters for weeks and persistently prohibiting local fishermen from fishing near the islands. In a series of recorded incidents, the Kenyan forces have previously sank at least 1 Somali-owned merchant ship and killed nearly 20 fishermen, thus prompting the Mujahideen Naval Forces to act with fierce force to stop the perpetrators.

On land, a dispatch of the Mujahideen military forces has successfully ambushed a convoy of 6 vehicles transporting Kenyan troops between the towns of Taabta and Dhoobley this morning. Two of the vehicles, including a white Toyota Land-cruiser carrying senior army officials, were burned down in the fire fight that lasted approximately 1 hour, before the Kenyan army fled the scene of the battle. 8 Kenyan soldiers were also killed in the ambush.

With the increased manoeuvres of the invading forces, Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujahideen pledges to defend the Muslim people of Somalia from all forms of invasion, ideological as well as physical, which intends to subjugate the population, occupy their territory, plunder their resources and infect the teachings of Islam with the degrading values of democracy.