Kenya police: White widow Samantha Lewthwaite is still in Somalia

Kenya: Kenyan security agencies say wanted white widow Samantha Lewthwaite is still in Somalia.

The Interpol office in Nairobi and Anti-Terror Police Unit said separately they had no confirmation Lewthwaite is dead in Ukraine as claimed.

The security agencies' reports were corroborated by the counter terror officials in Nairobi who also revealed the woman is living in southern Somalia.

"We have checked with the Interpol headquarters and they say no confirmation has so far come from Ukraine to confirm she is dead. We stand by our earlier report that she is in Somalia," said head of Interpol office in Nairobi Vitalis Okumu.

An official at ATPU who asked not to be named said they believe Lewthwaite is still in Somalia.

"The reports that she died in Ukraine are not correct," said a senior official who asked not to be named.

The UK's Daily Mail too said Lewthwaite is living in southern Somalia with her jihadist husband, a wanted al-Qaeda suspect who calls himself Marco Costa.

According to Daily Mail, a forged Mozambican passport bearing his picture clearly identifies him as Fahmi Jamal Salim who has been on the run from Kenyan police since he shot and killed twoNairobi  police officers in 2011.

The reports emerged in response to claims from a Moscow news agency earlier this week that she had been killed by sniper fire while fighting with a Ukrainian volunteer battalion against pro-Russian rebels.

The security agencies in Nairobi said they believe Lethwaite still poses a threat to the country at large in retaliation for Kenya sending troops to Somalia to defeat Al-Shabaab.

By marrying Salim, Samantha Lewthwaite has joined a family steeped in Muslim extremism and the jihad, the MailOnline said.

Salim's brother-in-law was notorious Al-Qaeda recruiting officer Musa Dheere, shot dead at a roadblock in Mogadishu in 2011 alongside Fazul Mohamed.

Dheere was wanted for the bombing of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998 when hundreds were killed.

Lewthwaite is considered an important banker/logistician for Al-Shabaab. Until recently she was a devoted follower of Ahmed Abdi Godane, the Al-Shabaab founder and spiritual leader who announced alliance to Al-Qaeda in June 2011.

Godane was the mastermind behind the shocking armed raid on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall last September, describing his militia's murders as 'an epic battle written in blood by my fighters to change the course of history'.

Godane was killed two months ago in an American air strike on a convoy in southern Somalia, and counter-terrorism police now fear that Lewthwaite and her cohorts could be planning revenge strikes.