Kenyan special forces enter El Adde to rescue soldiers believed to be alive

A contingent of Special Forces entered the devastated El Adde KDF camp yesterday to try and locate several Kenyan soldiers believed to be still alive but trapped in bush and scrab- land amid reports that most of the insurgents involved in Friday's raid could have been Kenyan radicals.

The Standard established last evening that Kenyan ground forces and forces dropped from the air were trying to secure the camp and locate a small group of survivors said to have made contact with other camps in Gedo region.

Military sources told The Standard a preliminary analysis of the situation shows that the use of Vehicle Borne Improvised Devices VBIED in Friday's raid totally devastated KDF defences and that the insurgents who must have planned the raid for long exploited a tactical weakness during rotation of forces to exact Friday's carnage.

The sources also said Kenya's military planners are now thinking of preparing better fortifications against VBIEDs after realizing that Al Shabaab has, increasingly used this tactic borrowed from the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and Al Qaida in the Arabic Peninsular to deadly effect. The new fortifications could include trenches and blast walls.

 

A KDF official serving Bardheere on the banks of river Juba in Somalia told the Standard that in recent months militants in Gedo region constitute a large number of foreign fighters including Kenyan converts to radical islam.

 

He also said during insurgents rammed a VBIEd into Kenya's defences after the capture of Bardheere from Al Shabaab in July last year but the attack was abortive because the car bomb was a soft skin vehicle and was destroyed before ramming Kenyan forces.

The VBIED used in Friday's raid was forged from an armour proof truck stolen from Burundian forces killed in Leego in Southern Somalia last year.

"After failing to breach our defences for long Al Shabaab fighters have adopted a new tactic since last year which they have used on Burundian, Uganda and now Kenyan forces. Last year they tried to ram a soft skin VBIED into our defences in Bardheere but it was destroyed killing the bomber and without inflicting damage on our forces," the officer who cannot be named told The Standard.

 

He also told that based on the changing demography Kenyan forces have encountered in Gedo which includes El Adde and Bardheere "there is a likelihood that most of the fighters involved in the El Adde operation were Kenyans," adding that while some of the foreign fighters carry identity documents indicating they are Kenyan, many are phenotypically non ethnic Somali.

 

The foreign fighters, including Kenyan converts are deemed to be better suited for certain operations and tasks and have been known to exhibit immense courage when charging at KDF forces and are also hardy and energetic. They, also, according to preliminary reports, towed the VBIED from Wargadud to the outskirts of El Adde.

"Al Shabaab has formed entire infantry squads of suicide bombers and they come into the battle field strapped with suicide vests," the expert said adding that "whereas Kenya's troops are tactically superior to the insurgents the tactic of Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices is not anything that any military is prepared for.

"Regarding what happened in El Adde we now know that a VBIED totally devastates any forces through a huge explosion and mass casualties and after that the fighters including the suicide squads run in. This is exactly what happened [in El Adde]."

A separate sources told The Standard that KDF has not made any decision to move on Wargadud, a mountainous and heavy forested village, 40 kilometres north of El Adde where Friday's carnage was planned.

The source told The Standard that the special forces who entered El Adde land and from the air have established contact with some commanders who got lost during the insurgent assault.

"These insurgents are every ready and planning to attack AMISOM forces. They exploit any weakness. What must have happened in El Adde is they exploited a gap that occurred when a one group of soldiers was leaving the camp and another was coming. The change of troops is a public event that happens in the open."