Post date: Oct 24, 2011 2:32:44 PM
Somalia government says it had not agreed with the scale of Kenya's involvement in Somalia and that its role was purely to help with logistics, says Somali president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA (OCTOBER 24, 2011) (REUTERS) - Kenya's military intervention into neighboring Somalia has not gone down well with its President whose country has not had an effective government for the last 20 years, and where the presence of the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab Islamic insurgency has had serious security repercussions on the region.
Kenya has in the past initiated brief cross-border incursions, but the latest operation is on a much larger scale, raising fears that its military could be dragged into a protracted conflict with its anarchic neighbour.
While Somali government officials had said the two countries were cooperating in the fight against al Shabaab, President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed was more circumspect about Kenya's latest incursion which began on Monday (October 24).
"The Somali government and its people will not be pleased with Kenya's intervention, we had not agreed with Kenya beyond helping us with logistics," Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed told reporters while visiting the front-line in Mogadishu.
The Islamist militants have proven capable of launching large-scale suicide attacks within Somalia and beyond, and have warned they would bring the "flames of war" into Kenya if the latter did not recall its troops.
This month, a suicide truck bombing claimed by the rebels killed more than 70 people when it exploded outside a compound housing government ministries in Somalia's capital Mogadishu.
The militants also claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in the Ugandan capital Kampala, which killed 79 people watching the football World Cup final last year.
That strike, the militants' first on foreign soil, was in revenge for Uganda's military contribution to the 9,000-strong AU peacekeeping force which is supporting Somalia's Western-backed government troops in removing the rebels from Mogadishu.
Nairobi is home to a large Somali community and last week security forces arrested two doctors charged with being members of al Shabaab.
Al Qaeda struck East Africa in 1998, killing hundreds of people, mostly Africans, in coordinated suicide bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.