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15 Al-Shabaab fighters killed in attack on Kenyan military camp

Xinhua, June 15, 2015 Adjust font size:

Kenya's military on Monday claimed to have killed four more Al-Shabaab suspects believed to be part of the militants who attempted to attack a military camp in the country's coast, bringing the death toll to 15.

Kenya Defence Force (KDF) spokesman, David Obonyo, said the four were pursued during air and ground operations and gunned down by military personnel on Sunday night.

Eleven Al-Shabaab militants were killed in the firefight on Sunday outside the military camp in Baure, Lamu county, the army earlier said.

"The operation is still ongoing to hunt down the militants who escaped and hiding in the vast Boni forests. We have heightened operations," Obonyo told Xinhua, adding that the bodies of the insurgents have been moved to a hospital for finger taking and DNA tests to establish their identities.

Meanwhile, anti-terrorism police are identifying whether a wanted terror suspect -- British Muslim convert, Thomas Evans, alias Abdul Hakim -- was among those killed by the army.

Hakim, who is said to have converted to Islam at the age of 19, traveled to Somalia in 2011 to fight alongside the terror group and was trained as a suicide bomber, according to reliable sources.

Another suspect, Lukman Osman Issa, alias Shirwa, who is behind last year's Mpeketoni massacre in Lamu that caused over 60 deaths, was killed in the operations, police and military sources indicate.

Obonyo appealed to the pubic to report any suspicious looking individuals or anybody seeking medical assistance in the area.

Somalia-based Al-Shabaab has launched series of attacks in Kenya since Kenyan troops entered Somalia in 2011 to fight the Al- Qaida-linked group.

The group's gunmen killed 148 people, mostly students, in a university in Kenya's northeastern county of Garissa on April 2. Endi