Attacks by Islamists terrorists on US bases have largely gone unreported. Al J Venter looks at the secret war raging in Africa
It was a pre-dawn clandestine attack involving about a dozen al-Shabaab fighters from Somalia that, despite a sizeable Kenyan Army and United States military presence, managed to infiltrate the perimeter of a military base in Manda Bay, Kenya. One of the rebels took aim with a rocket-propelled grenade, firing at a US surveillance plane and touching off an hours-long firefight. When it was over, the two American pilots of that plane and a US soldier were dead, two other US military personnel were wounded, six surveillance aircraft and helicopters were destroyed, and parts of the airfield were in flames.
All that took place early on the morning of January, 5 2020, at Magogoni Airfield and Camp Simba at Manda Bay, Kenya, a strategic military base well within view of Lamu, one of East Africa’s most popular tourist resorts.
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