Kenyan war plane strikes centre in offensive against Somali rebels

MOGADISHU - A warplane bombed a rebel-held town in southern Somalia on Saturday, hitting an empty feeding centre run by the Somali Red Crescent Society and killing one civilian.

Residents could not identify who carried out the attack in the town of Baardheere. Kenya, which is eight weeks into a ground and air offensive to crush the al Shabaab rebel group, said it had launched an air strike on a compound nearby.

"The bomb hit a feeding centre run by the SRCS and a school building," Hawa Abdillah Mo'alim said. The bomb destroyed the centre's critical water tank, residents said.

An aid worker said the death toll would have been higher had the feeding centre been distributing food to displaced famine victims. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which supports the feeding centre, declined to comment.

Residents said al Shabaab had sealed off the area. On Thursday, Kenya targeted a compound residents said was used by the militants as a training base. Kenyan Colonel Cyres Oguna told a news conference in Nairobi on Saturday that the building was an ammunition's depot.

Kenyan troops crossed into Somalia almost two months ago after a wave of kidnappings and cross-border raids it blamed on the rebels.

Its forces initially advanced smoothly on militant towns in Somalia's southern border regions but has since become bogged down by heavy rains and a lack of clear strategy.

Kenyan air strikes have intensified in past weeks. Analysts say that rather than confront Kenya's military head-on, the militants had melted into the population from where they launch hit-and-run attacks on the Kenyans.

Kenya wants its forces in Somalia to be integrated into the African Union AMISOM force that has about 9400 peacekeepers deployed in Mogadishu. Kenya will be pushing for a more robust "peace enforcement" mandate for its troops in southern Somalia than the peacekeeping mandate the Ugandan and Burundian troops operate under in Mogadishu, Oguna said.