Kenya in ‘search and rescue’ as Shebab claims 100 killed

NAIROBI, Kenya — The bodies of at least four Kenyan soldiers slain by Somali Islamic extremists arrived in the Kenyan capital on Monday.

Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militants stormed an African Union base Friday, the Somali army said, with witnesses reporting several dead.

The attack is described as the worst since Kenya sent its troops to battle Al-Shabaab in southern Somalia in 2011.

Al-Shabab often exaggerates the number of soldiers it kills while the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and Kenyan government officials often downplay the tolls, AFP reported.

Kenyan Defense Secretary Raychelle Omamo says a search, rescue and recovery operation is underway in the area of the attack. Masked al-Shabab gunmen also killed almost 150 people at Garissa University College a year ago.

“KDF’s priority as is our norm in military operations was to degrade the enemy which we have already done through a concerted effort of both land and air assets in the last 48 hours”, Mwathethe said. “We are trying to search for them, rescue them and recover them”, Mwathethe said without saying if they were captured.

A Kenyan soldier, who Kenya Defence Forces said was injured in the attack by al-Shabab in Somalia earlier this week, sits in a waiting ambulance after being airlifted back to Nairobi for medical treatment, in Kenya Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016.

Prosecutors said Ahmed and Yusuf abandoned their homes in Sweden in 2008 to travel to Somalia, where they were born, to undergo military and doctrinal training with al Shabaab.

Al-Shabab also claimed its fighters seized armaments and military vehicles in the attack in the town of El-Ade near the Kenyan border.

Shebab spokesman Shebab spokesman Abdiaziz Abu Musab claimed to have killed 63 Kenyan troops in the pre-dawn attack, but this could not be immediately verified. In the U.S. military, a company has 100 to 200 soldiers, according to the U.S. Army’s website.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta confirmed his country had lost soldiers during the attack but there are no official figures yet from Kenyan authorities.