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By David Clarke and Sahra Abdi
October 31, 2011 2:21 PM EDT
Kenya Monday dismissed as "al Shabaab propaganda" reports that its warplanes hit a refugee camp in southern Somalia where five people were killed and 45 wounded a day earlier.
Kenya's military said its jets hit the town of Jilib on Sunday in an operation targeting fighters from the Somali insurgent group, killing 10 and wounding many.
Kenyan military spokesman Emmanuel Chirchir told Reuters the airstrike hit an al Shabaab vehicle armed with an anti-aircraft gun and loaded with ammunition near the camp. He said it caught fire and was driven into the camp in search of human shields, but exploded.
"Instead of taking it to safety, he drove it into the IDP (internally displaced persons) camp," Chirchir said. "We were on point in terms of accuracy."
Kenya sent troops into Somalia in mid-October in pursuit of the Somali militants it blames for a series of kidnappings on Kenyan soil and frequent assaults on its security forces in the border province of North Eastern.
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Gautam Chatterjee, Head of Mission for aid agency Medecins Sans Frontiers Holland in Somalia, said earlier Monday that five people had been killed and 45 wounded, mostly women and children, in an explosion in the camp.
"In our hospital in Marare, we received 31 children, nine women and five men. All of them of with shrapnel injuries," he told Reuters from Nairobi. He said three children, one man and one woman had been killed in the blast.
MSF, which said the explosion happened during an aerial bombardment, has evacuated its team from Jilib and suspended operations helping some 1,500 households in the camp.
The first serious clash between Kenyan troops and al Shabaab militants was last Thursday. Kenya said it killed nine rebels and that one Kenyan soldier wounded in the insurgent ambush subsequently died.
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Odinga said Monday no Somali civilians had been targeted by the Kenyan air force, and reports of civilian deaths at the hands of its military were propaganda.
"It would be most unfortunate, but the information we have is that it's just al Shabaab propaganda. That is what we have from our own forces," he told a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, with his Somali counterpart.
"If that happened really, and there were civilian casualties, then it's an unfortunate incident, and we're sorry about that," said Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali.
The two prime ministers signed an agreement Monday after talks outlining the joint operation against al Shabaab.
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