TheCable

Following the death of 147 students at Garissa University in Kenya, the Kenyan military has retaliated with bomb attacks on al-Shabab base in Somalia.

According to David Obonyo, the Kenyan military spokesman who spoke to BBC, fighter jets have bombed positions of the militant group.

The warplanes were reported to have targeted two camps in the Gedo region, used by al-Shabab to cross into Kenya, making the first response to an al-Shabab assault last week.

Last week, al-Shabab attacked Garissa university dormitory, leaving about 147 people dead in a bout of Christian killing.

President Uhuru Kenyatta vowed after the attack to respond “in the severest way possible”, and Obonyo confirmed that the attack on al-Shabab was a response threats by the Islamist sect.

The attack on Garissa University, about 150km (90 miles) from the Somali border, was the deadliest by al-Shabab in Kenya; many families are yet to identify their dead in the massacre.

The al-Qaeda affiliate says it is at war with Kenya, and wants it to withdraw troops sent to Somalia in 2011 to help the weak government in Mogadishu fight the militants.

Though many have criticised the government as being slow to respond to the attack, Manoah Espisu, spokesman of the president, said the military was swift to respond.

Local media reported that it took Special Forces several hours to arrive at the university because of delays in their flight from the capital, Nairobi.

The attack ended when the four militants were killed by police more than 15 hours after they stormed the university, with one of the gunmen has been named as Abdirahim Abdullahi, a law student who graduated from Nairobi University in 2013.