Jets bombed a base run by al Shabaab militants north of Somalia's Kismayu port on Saturday, but it was not clear who carried out the raid or whether there were casualties, Reuters cited local residents and officials as saying. Kenya sent troops into Somalia in October after cross-border raids and kidnappings that it blamed on al Shabaab, but regional security has not improved. Somali militants killed nine people in an attack in Kenya's capital Nairobi last week. A regional Somali military official said the jets were Kenyan. A Kenyan military spokesman in Nairobi could not confirm this, and neither could U.N. peacekeepers in Somalia. Al Shabaab confirmed the bombardment and said none of its militants had been killed or wounded. But a Somali government official in the area where the attack took place said some militants had been killed in the bombing. The jets hit the militants' base near the village of Daytubako, 135 km (84 miles) north of Kismayu, the nerve centre of al Shabaab operations in the Horn of Africa country. Residents in Jilib, a town 15 km from the scene, described what they saw and heard with respect to the bombing. Al Shabaab said its fighters escaped the bombing. "The jets bombed Daytubako village, but they killed animals and injured four civilians. No Al Shabaab casualties," said Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab's military spokesman. "One jet targeted a well where civilians were watering their animals. It dropped several bombs on this well." A spokesman for the Western-backed government said there were no civilian casualties and the al Shabaab base was damaged.
