Wednesday, November 02, 2011
A U.N. arms monitoring group has documented many instances of money, fighters and weapons being given to militants or flown into areas of Somalia they control. Kenya's military on Tuesday said it had reliable information that two aircraft landed in the Somali town of Baidoa with weapons on board intended for al-Shabab militants.
Kenyan military spokesman Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir said Wednesday that Kenyan military planes would target and attack those weapons so they cannot be used. He said intelligence showed that the weapons were transported to a militant camp.
"Our focus is to reduce the effectiveness of those particular weapons," he said. "At the end of the day you get weapons but these are weapons they cannot use."
Al-Shabab fighters closed down roads leading to Baidoa airport on Saturday, a Nairobi-based security official said. A few hours later, residents heard the sound of heavy weaponry being fired, he said, citing information from informants in the town. The organization the official works for does not allow him to be identified by name.
Mohamud Abdulahi Wehelie, a member of Somalia's parliament, said he spoke to three witnesses who said one plane landed with weapons and that it was white. Al-Shabab men hurried to offload it, the witnesses told him, and some items that appeared to be bombs or grenades fell from the door.
The Kenyan military did not say from where the planes carrying weapons originated, but a July report by the U.N.'s Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea said that al-Shabab controls two "international" sized airports and one former military airport with asphalt runways.
Al-Shabab "therefore theoretically possesses the capability to charter and receive deliveries by wide-body aircraft ... that might carry up to 47 tons of weapons and/or ammunitions," the July report said.
The report suggested that illicit flights of weapons or fighters for Somali militants could be originating in Eritrea, Yemen or the United Arab Emirates.
When al-Shabab launched an offensive during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in 2010, the monitoring group said it received credible reports of arms deliveries to al-Shabab, and that the group also observed an increase in the number of cargo flights from Yemen to Somalia at the same time.
The report also said it received a report it could not independently verify that an unknown aircraft flew from the tiny Horn of Africa country of Eritrea in March carrying 25 foreign fighters.
The report noted that Eritrea consistently denies providing military support to armed groups in Somalia, but that "new information ... not only confirms many previous allegations of Eritrean military involvement, but also offers firm grounds to believe that Eritrea still retains active linkages to Somali armed groups."
The report also said Eritrea gives about $80,000 a month to al-Shabab-linked individuals in Nairobi.
Kenyan forces moved into Somalia in mid-October to attack insurgents following a string of kidnappings by Somali gunmen inside Kenya. Kenya has said the military incursion had been planned for months. Al-Shabab has threatened to carry out terror attacks in Nairobi in response.
Chirchir has warned that the Kenyan military will attack 10 Somali towns where it believes al-Shabab has a presence and advised civilians to stay away from al-Shabab camps. Kenyan forces are moving in on the port city of Kismayo, one of the places with an "international" runway that al-Shabab controls.
Elsewhere, a small group of al-Shabab militants fired rocket propelled grenades at a Kenyan army convoy near the border late on Tuesday, said Ali Hussein, a Somali military commander. All the grenades missed except one which damaged a vehicle, he said. Chirchir said one Kenyan soldier received minor wounds in the attack.
Associated Press reporter Katharine Houreld in Nairobi and Abdi Guled in Mogadishu, Somalia contributed to this report.