April 6, 2015

Kenya sent fighter planes into Somalia today to carry out bombing missions at training camps belonging to Islamist jihadists al-Shabab. Both camps were in the Gedo region of Somalia, part of which shares a border with eastern Kenya.

The bombing is seen as a first response to last Thursday’s attack on a Kenyan university. Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, promised to respond to the April 2 attack in “the severest possible way.”

Al-Shabab was formed as a terrorist militant organization in Somalia around 2006. In 2012, the group pledged its allegiance to al Qa’ida. It has launched a number of bombings and attacks in Somalia and neighboring Kenya over the years. Last Thursday, four gunmen from al-Shabab launched a siege that lasted 15 hours at Garissa University College, a school of about 800 students. By the time the attackers were stopped, 148 people from the university were dead, 142 of them students and the others police and security guards. Christian students were targeted in the attack.

Other World Book article:

• Africa (2014 Back in time article) 

Jan. 25, 2012

United States Navy SEALs have carried out a daring rescue of two foreign aid workers who had been kidnapped in Somalia in October 2011. The SEALs parachuted into Somalia to carry out the overnight operation. After a shootout that left nine of the captors dead, the SEALs freed the hostages, an American woman and a Danish man, uninjured. The SEALs and hostages left Somalia by helicopter for Djibouti to Camp Lemonnier, the primary base of operations for the U.S. military in the Horn of Africa. Somalia, which has had no functioning central government since 1991 and is essentially lawless, is the base for numerous kidnappers and pirates. U.S. Department of Defense officials estimate that some 150 people are currently being held hostage there, primarily merchant marine sailors from ships seized for ransom by pirates.

Members of the United States Coast Guard capture suspected pirates in the Gulf of Aden, north of Somalia. Somali pirates have attacked many ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Eric L. Beauregard, U.S. Navy

A Defense Department spokesperson confirmed that the elite SEAL team that carried out the Somali mission, SEAL Team Six, is the same unit that in May 2011 killed Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden was the head of the al Qa’ida terrorist organization and the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.