One of the KDF soldiers killed in a raid on KDF camp in Somalia last Friday had narrowly missed a similar attack last year.
40-year-old Corporal Moses Mwakio was part of the team dispatched to Kulbiyow Camp from their base at the Mariakani barracks in Kilifi.
This was his third assignment and according to his wife, Mr Mwakio had first gone to Somalia in 2012, just a year after the Kenyan troops advanced into Somalia in search of Al Shabaab.
Mwakio then served for a year and came back the second time 2015.
When the El Adde attack happened, he had just left the camp, leaving behind an attack that left 173 KDF soldiers dead on January 15, 2016.
According to the Standard, his mother Christine Mwaluwa had begged him to quit the armed forces but Mwakio refused.
“He was adamant and stood his ground. He said he believed God would protect him throughout,” said Mwakio’s sister Monica Malemba as quoted by the Standard.
His wife says she talked to him last on Wednesday last week and that he was in good spirits.
“I spoke with him last Wednesday, two days before their camp came under Al Shabaab attack,” she said.
But the soldier was not to return home alive.
Two days after the conversation, she was summoned to the Mariakani Barracks by the Department of Defence and told that the father to her three children had been killed.
Mwakio's mother is now appealing to President Uhuru Kenyatta to ensure that the three children left behind are well taken care of.