By Yassin Juma
NAIROBI
Kenyan warplanes and tanks on Monday struck training camps of the Al-Shabaab militant group inside neighboring Somalia – an apparent response to last week's attack on a university campus in which 149 people were killed.
"The airstrikes have been hitting the village of Gandhodhawe and an Al-Shabaab camp outside the village," Sheikh Musse, a local government official, told The Anadolu Agency by phone.
"It [the bombardment] has been ongoing for an hour now," he said. "Villagers are fleeing."
The targeted Al-Shabaab camps are located close to the Kenyan border.
People on the Kenyan side of the border also confirmed the strikes.
They said the strikes were followed by artillery shelling.
"We have witnessed our tanks heading into Somalia," Moalim Saleh, a Mandera County government official, told AA.
"We can hear the bombardments not far from our town," he said.
The bombardment appears to come in retaliation for the killing of nearly 150 people last Thursday in an attack on Kenya's Garissa University.
Responsibility for the attack – Kenya's worst since 1998's U.S. embassy bombing – was claimed by Al-Shabaab.
