Chief of Defence Forces General Samson Mwathethe, on Sunday vowed that the country will revenge for every drop of blood shed by slain and injured soldiers, in Friday's attack by Al Shabaab on Kenya Defence Force (KDF) base in El-Adde, Gedo.
“We shall hunt down and destroy you, the lives of our soldiers you killed shall not be in vain,” Mwathethe talked tough.
While receiving four injured soldiers at the Wilson airport, Nairobi, the Chief of Defence Forces also confirmed that some Kenyan soldiers were captured by the militia group which was using them as human shield.
True to his word, reports now indicate that Kenya's special forces arrived by air in Somalia and were deployed around El Adde with the mission to investigate the battlefield, search and rescue captured soldiers.
According to a report by the Standard, sources within the military confirmed that the Special Forces were under instruction to attack the militiamen, who are said to have since fragmented into smaller groups after the ambush.
While addressing the press at Wilson, Defence Cabinet Secretary Raychelle Omamo divulged that the soldiers who were affected in the attack were a company size. A company in the military is a unit with around 80-250 soldiers, a figure that indicates the population that could have been at the KDF base in El-Adde.
The CS however, did not speak on the number of casualties, even as al shabaab claimed to have killed 100 soldiers and had captured some as prisoners of war.
“Information regarding casualties and the fallen will be availed to affected families directly as the rescue, recovery, verification and consolidation operations continue,” said Omamo.
General Mwathethe confirmed that al shabaab attacked KDF and Somali National Army bases using three vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIED) commandeered by suicide bombers.
Emerging reports suggest that the explosions from VBIED not only killed KDF troops but also wiped out a significant number of the attackers.
Mwathethe alluded that there were casualties on both sides and that KDF was engaging the terrorists and inflicting heavy casualties on them.
