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On January 3, a unit of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Somalian group al-Shabaab crossed the border into Kenya and attacked a vehicle of the Kenyan Police in the northeastern Mandera county on the Kenyan-Somali border, according to Reuters.
Daniel Bundotich, the deputy country commissioner for Mandera South, told Reuters that four Kenyan policemen and a civilian were killed in the al-Shabaab cross-border attack. Bundotich added that al-Shabaab fighters destroyed a vehicle of the Kenyan Police during the attack.
“The militants also set on fire a police lorry … The police officers were on patrol along Elwak-Kutolo when they were ambushed,” Bundotich told Reuters.
Lately, the al-Shabaab group launched dozens of attacks against the Kenyan Police from its positions in the areas of El Adde, Busar and Cows Qurun in southwestern Somalia near the Kenyan-Somali border. Reuters said that dozens of Kenyan policemen were killed in these attacks.
Map By: Polgeonow.com
Keyna became a target of al-Shabaab group mainly because it’s a part of the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), which supports the Somali Federal Government against the al-Qaeda-affiliated group. However, the AMISOM and the Federal Government backed by the US were not able to make any real achievements in their war on al-Shabaab.
The war on al-Shabaab is currently restricted to few US airstrikes against the group. The US conducted an airstrike and destroyed a VBIED of al-Shabaab 50km west of the Somali capital Mogadishu on January 2, according to an official statement of the US Army Africa Command (AFRICOM).
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Due to this limited strategy, experts believe that the threat of al-Shabaab could increase in 2018 not only in Somalia, but also in the countries bordering it.