A KDF soldier has narrated one of the most terrifying experiences in which he faced Al-Shabaab attackers at Gedo region.
In 2016, armed Al-Shabaab militants ran over a KDF base at El-Adde, killing over 150 soldiers in one of the worst setbacks.
In The Soldiers Legacy, Lance Corporal Erick Lang'at, a survivor of the attack paints a grim picture of what happened during the tense fighting within the camp.
D Company and 9 KR had been deployed to the base 15 days before the attack, as part of routine rotation done at the beginning of every year.
A day prior to the attack, the outgoing sentry had discovered movements outside the camp but thought it was normal smuggling activities.
“At around 5.15 am on January 15, a vehicle’s headlights briefly flashed in the base’s direction and then turned off. Within no time, the engine ignited and the vehicle hurtled towards the operation base,” Lang’at writes.
The attackers were armed with Rocket Propelled Grenades, and subsequently detonated a bomb outside the base.
“After the explosion, everything went silent for about three minutes. In its wake, the blast had destroyed part of the operation base, leaving only one survivor in the immediate environs of the epicentre,” he writes.
And after intense fighting, a number of soldiers ran out of the camp to nearby thickets with only few managing to escape.
“I realised I had run out of ammunition and took a magazine from a colleague who had succumbed. Recognising that holding onto the defended locality was no longer tenable, the troops abandoned their positions in small groups to make it difficult for the enemy to pursue them,” Lang’at recalls.