Somalia:Prime Minister Sharmake Strongly condemns the El Adde Terrorist Attack

Kenyan Defence Minister Raychelle Omamo said Kenya was striking back and would pursue the attackers.

The African Union Mission in Somalia “can confirm that there was an attack on our troops in El-Adde” and more details will be released later, it said on Friday, January15, via its Twitter account.

Kenyan troops are involved in a search and rescue operation in Somalia after Al-Shabab militants claimed to have killed more than 100 soldiers in an attack on a military base on Friday.

The claim was made by Sheikh Abdulaziz Abu Musab, a spokesman for the military wing of al-Shabab.

It is expected that more bodies will be airlifted to Nairobi, as desperate relatives and friends of soldiers killed, injured or held captive on Monday thronged military bases in search of their kin.

Kenya has more than 4,000 troops in the 22,000-strong AU force in Somalia helping the UN-backed government battle Al-Shabaab, which is part of the Al-Qaida allied terror network.

The captives identified themselves as Isaack Balewa, 50, and Lawrence Kamau, 30, and said they had only been serving in Somalia for two weeks when they were captured.

The attackers used vehicles packed with explosives and suicide bombers.

“We will fight them deep in their hideouts, smoke them out of the caves, follow them to the end in honour of every drop of blood of fellow Kenyans”, said he.

Al Shabab said the attack was in retaliation for the Kenyan “invasion of Muslim lands” and what it said was the army’s “persecution of innocent Muslims” inside Kenya, a reference to the government’s pursuit of suspected militants in the country.

The Shabab have also staged attacks in Kenya, killing at least 67 people at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall in 2013, and massacring 148 people at a university in Garissa in April 2015.

But Kenyatta said the troops would continue in their mission.

The Swedes fought against US-funded African Union forces in Somalia, prosecutors said.

Meanwhile, the Special Representative of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission (SRCC) for Somalia, Francisco Madeira has strongly condemned the dawn attack on its base by Al-Shabaab militants.