NAIROBI (Somaliguardian) – Kenya’s fighter jets carried out air strikes in south Somalia, targeting residential areas in a town close to the border between the two countries, Mogadishu-based Radio Mustaqbal has reported on Thursday.
One of the strikes hit a family home in the town of El-Adde in Gedo region, killing a woman and injuring 5 of her children, residents said.
Kenya’s military conducted similar air strikes in nearby areas in the past and killed pastoralists and their livestock, though Nairobi has not yet apologized for any of the attacks.
It comes amid simmering tensions between Nairobi and Mogadishu after Kenya closed its air space with Somalia in what Somali authorities say aims to pressure Farmajo’s administration to lift ban on Kenyan Mira Khat.
“The air strike targeted homes inhabited by civilians. A mother died and five of her children wounded [in the attack] launched by Kenya’s military,” a resident in the town of El-Adde told Mustaqbal Radio.
Some of the children sustaining critical injuries have been rushed to hospitals in other parts of Gedo region.
Both Kenya and Somalia have not immediately commented on the attack, which is feared to add tinder to an already raging border row between the two neighboring countries.
There have been reports that another Kenyan air strike near the town of El-waq in the region destroyed telecommunication masts belonging to Hormuud and Somtel companies, in what locals say is a retaliation for attacks by the militant group Al-Shabaab in which it had destroyed the headquarters of Kenya’s Safaricom telecommunications giant.
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