Camp Simba attack | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of the War in Somalia | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
United States Kenya | Al-Shabaab | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
~100[3] Unknown | ~30–40 militants[4] | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
1 soldier, 2 contractors killed[2][3] 5 aircraft destroyed 1 aircraft damaged 2 Oshkosh M-ATV several fuel tanker destroyed [2][5] None |
5 killed 5 arrested Unknown wounded[6] |
The Camp Simba attack was a pre-dawn attack at Magagoni Airfield near Camp Simba on 5 January 2020. The camp is used by Kenyan and U.S. troops and is located near Manda Bay on the mainland of Lamu County, Kenya. The perpetrators were al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based Islamic extremist insurgent group. Approximately 30-40 [4] al-Shabaab militants assaulted Camp Simba, which was home to around 100 US personnel along with an undisclosed number of Kenyan troops. It was the first al-Shabaab targeting of US military personnel in Kenya.[7]
The timing of the attack coincided with recent Iranian threats of retaliation to target US troops in response to the US assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in the 2020 Baghdad International Airport airstrike. However, al-Shabaab claimed no link between their decision to attack and to those events.[8]
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