200810172177 | Somali Islamists threaten Kenya with attacks

Somali Islamists threaten Kenya with attacks

Mogadishu - An extremist Islamic militia in Somalia has threatened to launch attacks on neighbouring Kenya, if its government trains Somali government troops, a spokesperson said. The US has accused the group, al-Shabab, of harbouring the al-Qaeda-linked terrorists who allegedly blew up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Kenya has offered to train Somali troops. In a telephone interview with local radio stations late on Wednesday, Sheik Muktar Robow, an al-Shabab militia spokesperson, blamed the Somali armed forces for thousands of deaths.

"We heard that the Kenyan government is willing to train 10 000 men for the TFG (transitional federal government), so if it goes on to do this, we will order all our holy warriors to start the jihadi war inside Kenya," Robow said in the interview, which several radio stations in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, broadcast live.

Kenyan government spokesperson Alfred Mutua declined to comment.

When Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf's government was formed in October 2004, regional governments offered to train a nucleus police force and army.

The training was to take place in the host country, not in Somalia because of security concerns. Uganda already has trained dozens of police officers with funding from the UN development agency, and al-Shabab is not known to have threatened Uganda with attacks or carried any out there.

Kenya has not indicated how many Somali soldiers it plans to train or when.

Al-Shabab is among several Islamic militia groups that have waged an Iraq-style insurgency against Somali government troops and their Ethiopian allies for almost two years. The nearly daily mortar attacks and gun battles have killed thousands of Somali civilians in the capital, deaths that all sides blame on each other.

Ethiopian troops entered Somalia in December 2006 to back their Somali allies and oust Islamists who controlled much of southern Somalia and Mogadishu for six months.

Somalia has not had an effective government since 1991, when warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre before turning against each other, reducing the Horn of Africa nation to a state of chaos and anarchy.