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Airwars Assessment
(Previous Incident Code: SOM040a)
Local residents said jets bombed an al Shabaab camp near El Adde in Gedo region late at night on Sunday July 24.
The attack hit the same area that 100 Kenyan peacekeepers were killed in January 2016 when al Shabaab forces overran their base.
It was attributed to the Kenyan Defence Force with the Pentagon telling the Bureau of Investigative Journalism the US was not responsible. Some reports said as many as 70 al Shabaab were killed though the limited capacity of the KDF aircraft raises questions over this claim.
Research by Kenyan NGO Journalists for Justice found multiple occasions when claims that airstrikes caused mass al Shabaab casualties were false. A report documented incidents when jets failed to kill members of the terrorist group and instead hit “civilian villages, water-points and livestock”.
The KDF operates 22 F-5 Tiger fighters and ground attack aircraft, according to the 2016 Military Balance, published by London thinktank the International Institute for Strategic Studies. However its equipment in general is known to be aging and it is “experiencing declining levels of operability”, according to IHS Janes. It is not clear how precise a night strike by its limited strike fighter fleet could be.
Key Information
Geolocation Notes
Reports of the incident mention that the strike targeted an Al Shabaab camp near the town Al Adde, in the same area where the Battle of El Adde took place, in which 100 Kenyan peacekeepers were killed earlier in 2016. One source reported that jets targeted ‘civilian villages, water points and livestock’. Due to limited information and satellite imagery available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the precise location of the strike. The coordinates for El Adde are: 3.03594, 41.86737.