Kenyan forces kill 21 fighters in Somalia

Kenya 's military said on Wednesday it had killed
21 al Shabaab fighters in Somalia where its
troops are trying to defeat the militant Islamist
group that has often struck civilian targets inside
Kenya.
Kenyan troops, which are in Somalia as part of
an African Union (AU) deployment, struck a
group of al Shabaab fighters in the west of the
country, near the Kenyan border, David Obonyo,
spokesman for Kenya Defence Forces, said in a
statement.
Al Shabaab spokesman Abdiasis abu Musab said
its fighters had killed five soldiers, wounded eight
and burnt one military vehicle in the fighting. The
reports could not be independently verified.
Al Shabaab, a hardline Islamist group, ruled large
parts of Somalia until 2011, when it was driven
out of Mogadishu by AU and Somali troops. It
still control some rural areas and carries out
frequent attacks in the capital and other areas in
its attempt to dislodge the Western-backed
government.
In January, Kenyan troops took heavy losses
when al Shabaab made a dawn raid on their
camp in El Adde near the Kenyan border. Al
Shabaab said it killed more than 100 soldiers.
Kenya gave no exact casualty figure.
The group killed 148 students at Garissa
University in northeast Kenya in April 2015, the
worst militant attack in the country in almost
two decades. An al Shabaab attack on the
Westgate mall in Nairobi in September 2013
killed 67 people.