... Harakat ash-Shabaab al-Mujahidin aka the Mujahideen Youth Movement. It was originally the youth movement of the Islamic Courts, now pretty much all of what's left of it. They are aligned with al-Qaeda but operate more like the Afghan or Pakistani Taliban...
in southern Somalia, the objective of Operation Linda Nchi, which enters its 15th week on Sunday.
Speaking at the weekly media briefing on the operation at the Department of Defence headquarters, Col Cyrus Oguna, who is in charge of information and operations, said the Kenya Defence Forces are keen on destroying Al-Shabaab's command and logistics centres.
"As we are speaking now, Al-Shabaab is halfway in the pit," said Col Oguna, who was accompanied by the director of Horn of Africa division at the Foreign Affairs ministry Lindsay Kiptiness and deputy police front man Charles Owino.
"The targeting has been on logistics bases and command centres and (these) are critical in any operation. And if you cripple a logistics base and a command centre, the war is halfway won," said Col Oguna.
| Winning the other half requires you to dig the bastards out of their holes and force them to surrender. Or to die. That's not quite as easy as crippling a logistics base, but until you do it the war remains only halfway won. |
Six vehicles -- five Toyota Land Cruisers and a lorry -- were destroyed in the air strikes, and KDF said six Al-Shabaab commanders and an unknown number of members of the militia group were killed.
On Saturday evening, there were reports from security agents in Mogadishu that Bilal El Berjawi, considered the successor to Fazul Abdalla and Saleh Nabhan at the helm of the Al-Qaeda terror group, had been killed in an kaboom linked to infighting within Al-Shabaab.
Col Oguna said the destruction of the defensive and supply base at Bibi and another at a town known as Hayo were crucial to KDF's mission to obliterate the group seen as a legitimate threat to Kenya's stability and economy.