By Mohamed Sheikh Nor and David Malingha Doya
Somalia’s al-Shabaab militant group contradicted Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta by saying its fighters were responsible for attacks on the East African nation’s coast that left at least 58 people dead.
“The mujahedeen forces carried out two consecutive attacks on two settlements near Lamu, one was Mpeketoni and the other one was a village close to Mpeketoni,” according to comments by a man identifying himself as the spokesman for the military wing of al-Shabaab, Sheikh Abdulaziz Abu Musab.
The comments, broadcast yesterday by the pro-al-Shabaab Radio al-Andulus in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, couldn’t be independently verified.
“If there is a recording obviously our intelligence has seen it,” Manoah Esipisu, spokesman for the Kenyan presidency, said today by phone. “We have our intelligence and we know what our intelligence says. We are not going to go into mudslinging with al-Shabaab.”
The attacks were in revenge for the deaths of al-Shabaab fighters who had been killed by Kenyan forces, Abu Musab said. Kenyan troops began an incursion into southern Somalia in 2011 to fight al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked group that’s trying to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state.
Unidentified gunmen attacked towns and villages in the coastal county of Lamu, including Mpeketoni, Mapenya and Poromoko, on June 15 and June 16, according to emergency workers and the Interior Ministry. All but one of the 49 victims killed in the raids were male, according to the Kenya Red Cross. Another nine people died in Poromoko yesterday.
High Tension
There’s an emerging risk of the “high tension” in Mpeketoni taking on ethnic dimensions and a growing threat of retaliation, the Red Cross said today in an e-mailed statement. Large groups of people are moving south toward the coastal towns of Lamu, a Unesco World Heritage site popular with tourists, and the port city of Mombasa, the organization said.
The killings were “well planned, orchestrated and politically motivated ethnic violence,” Kenyatta said yesterday in a televised national address. “This therefore was not an al-Shabaab terrorist attack.”
Kenyatta didn’t identify who was responsible for the killings. Evidence “indicates” that local political networks were involved in the planning and execution of the assaults, he said, without elaborating.
The criminal investigation into the attacks has been compromised because Kenyatta prematurely ruled out al-Shabaab while all possibilities are still being examined, opposition leader Raila Odinga told reporters today in Nairobi.
Several Arrests
The owner and driver of a vehicle used in the attacks is among “several” people who have been arrested and the officer in charge of the local police station was fired and will be charged in court, Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo said on his Twitter account today.
About 50 people were involved in the raids, according to Kenya Police spokeswoman Zipporah Mboroki. African Union Commission Chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said the attacks were carried out by al-Shabaab, according to a statement e-mailed yesterday from the continental body.
The militia has threatened to carry out further attacks on Kenya until its forces are withdrawn from Somalia. Kenyatta has pledged to keep the troops in place until the militants are defeated.
In September, al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for an attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, in which at least 67 people died.
Source: Bloomberg
The post Al-Shabaab Contradicts Kenyatta Claim in Kenyan Coast Attack appeared first on WardheerNews.