{Officials in southwestern Somalia said two Kenyan soldiers and one Somali soldier were killed Friday when al-Shabab militants ambushed their convoy in the Gedo region.}<\/p>\n
Regional military officials said the ambush began with a massive roadside explosion which destroyed a Kenyan military vehicle, killing the two Kenyan soldiers and wounding others. Al-Shabab fighters then fired on the convoy and exchanged heavy gunfire with Kenyan and Somali National Army soldiers. <\/p>\n
The Somali soldier died after being hit in the chest by shrapnel, officials said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe convoy was attacked after they detonated an explosion in a narrow road between hills,\u201d said Colonel Warfa Sheikh Aden, military spokesman for Somali troops in the region.<\/p>\n
Officials said at least three militants were killed in the fighting.<\/p>\n
Aden said at least three other soldiers \u2014 all Kenyans, along with a civilian \u2014 were wounded.<\/p>\n
Al-Shabab, for its part, said it killed 10 Kenyan soldiers and destroyed three military vehicles.<\/p>\n
More gun battles were reported late Friday after al-Shabab launched a second ambush against a convoy of Somali troops who were dispatched to reinforce the convoy attacked earlier. It\u2019s unclear if there were any additional casualties resulting from this fighting.<\/p>\n
Kenyan troops are part of the African Union mission in Somalia. The AU mission, AMISOM, has been fighting al-Shabab since 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Officials in southwestern Somalia said two Kenyan soldiers and one Somali soldier were killed Friday when al-Shabab militants ambushed their convoy in the Gedo region.} Regional military officials said the ambush began with a massive roadside explosion which destroyed a Kenyan military vehicle, killing the two Kenyan soldiers and wounding others. Al-Shabab fighters then fired […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2475],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-26952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-voice-of-america"],"bylines":[{"id":2475,"name":"VOICE OF AMERICA","slug":"voice-of-america","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2475,"name":"VOICE OF AMERICA","slug":"voice-of-america","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26952"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=26952"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=26952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}