Al-Shabaab denies Kenyan troops killed its intelligence chief

Somalia Islamist group Al-Shabaab on Thursday dismissed claims that its senior intelligence chief was killed last week by Kenyan soldiers.

Speaking on the Al-Shabaab allied radio station, Al-Andulus, the group's spokesman Abdiasis Musab said the reports were misleading.

"The statement is unfounded and not true. No Al-Shabaab official has been killed. The statement is aimed at only giving false assurance to Kenyans who are still panicking after the El-Adde attack," said Musab.

Al-Shabaab did not however air any recording or live voice of Karatey in Thursday's announcement as a further confirmation that he was not killed.

The rebuttal came a few hours after Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) spokesman Colonel David Obonyo said Al-Shabaab's deputy commander Mahad Mohammed Karatey alias Mahat Karatey who was behind the El-Adde attack has been killed last week.

Karatey was also the overall head of the Alamnyat, the Al-Shabaab's intelligence wing. Obonyo said he was killed together with 10 middle level commanders and 42 recruits in the airstrike on Nadris camp on Feb. 8.

"Karatey had gone to the camp to preside over the passing out of an estimated 80 Alamnyat recruits who had completed their training and were due for deployment to carry out more terrorist attacks," Obonyo said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

Obonyo said Alamnyat is the Al-Shabaab intelligence wing that composes of suicide bombers, assassins, explosive experts and information gatherers and the killing of the overall commanders is a major blow to the Al-Qaida allied militant group.

Karatey was poised to succeed former Al-Shabaab emir Ahmed Abdi aw-Mohamed (Godane) but Ahmad Ubaidah who was one of the members of the Godane inner circle took over reigns of the group.

Karatey became the group's senior intelligence officer after former intelligence chief Abdishakur Tahlil was killed in another U.S. airstrike in December 2014.

Al-Shabaab militants launched an attack on the El-Adde base of Africa Union peacekeepers in Gedo region in southern Somalia on January 15. The exact number of soldiers killed in the attack remains unestabilished, though the terror group claimed to have killed 100 Kenyan soldiers in the attack. Endit