Somalia’s Al Shabaab says kills dozens of Kenyan troops
SANTIAGO DE CHILE: The death toll from dozens of forest fires that have devastated large areas in central and southern Chile has risen to nine, authorities said on Thursday, as thousands of firefighters struggled to control the blazes.
Emergency workers in the southcentral Maule region on Thursday recovered the bodies of two police officers killed fighting the fires, national forestry agency CONAF said, the latest victims of the worst wildfires in Chile’s history. Seven other people have died including four firefighters.
President Michelle Bachelet said early on Thursday 99 fires in five regions were burning, with 64 not yet controlled. The burn area grew dramatically overnight from 1,900 square kilometres to 2,400 square kilometres.
In Santa Olga, a town of 5,000 in Maule, 1,000 homes were destroyed, Mayor Carlos Valenzuela told local media. The town of Hualane, 70 kilometres to the north, was also under threat.
More than 4,000 firefighters were working to douse the flames, Bachelet said, including firefighters and experts from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Spain.
Through a charitable foundation, the Chilean-born wife of an heir to the MOGADISHU: The militant group Al Shabaab said its fighters killed dozens of Kenyan troops when they attacked a remote military base in Somalia on Friday, while Kenya’s army dismissed the report and said “scores” of militants were killed.
A spokesman for Al Shabaab, which often launches attacks on troops of the African Union’s AMISOM force, said its fighters killed at least 66 Kenyans at the base in the southern town of Kulbiyow, near the Kenyan border.
Al Shabaab said it lost fighters but did not give numbers.
Kenyan military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Paul Njuguna denied the claim that Al Shabaab had killed dozens of soldiers but did not give any casualty figures.
In a statement, he said Al Shabaab attackers used a vehicle packed with explosives to try to blast their way into the camp of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF). “KDF soldiers repulsed the terrorists, killing scores,” he said.
Njuguna said the attack was launched around dawn on Friday.
In January 2016, Al Shabaab said it had killed more than 100 Kenyan soldiers in El Adde, a Somali camp near the border with Kenya.
The military never gave details of casualties, but Kenya media reports suggested a toll of that magnitude.
Shaikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, Al Shabaab’s military operation spokesman, had said Al Shabaab fighters rammed two suicide car bombs into the base and seized it. “We are pursuing the Kenyan soldiers who ran away into the his sources had confirmed their detention and he said they were at risk of deportation, mirroring the fate US supermarket chain Wal-mart has hired the world’s largest firefighting plane, a “supertanker” with a capacity of 72 tonnes of water, which was being used near Hualane.
Russia will also send a firefighting Ilyushin II-76 tanker and helicopters.
Fires over a wide area of the country began amid hot, dry weather weeks ago. At least some of the fires may have been deliberately set, CONAF told local media, and after a meeting with intelligence chiefs on Thursday Bachelet said they were investigating possible causes.
More than 2,700 square kilometres have already burned, according to CONAF. woods,” he said.
Al Shabaab, whose assessment of casualties often differs markedly from official versions, typically rams the entrance to a target site with a car or truck bomb so fighters can storm in.
The militant group, which once ruled much of Somalia, wants to topple the Western-backed government in Mogadishu and drive out the peacekeeping force made up of soldiers from Kenya, Djibouti, Uganda, Ethiopia and other African countries.
African Union and Somali troops have driven Al Shabaab fighters from major urban strongholds and ports, including the capital Mogadishu in 2011, but they have often struggled to defend smaller, more remote areas from attacks.