Al-Shabaab chief announces they are shifting the war to Kenya

MOGADISHU, Al-Shabaab vowed Thursday to launch attacks into Kenyan borders and shift their war into Kenya. In a message from one of their commanders, he urged the Shabaab militants and all Muslims to start launching their attacks against the Kenyan government and citizens.

"The war will be shifting to Kenya, if they kill a Somali girl we kill a Kenyan girl," Fuad Mohamed Khalaf, one of the Shabaab's most senior commanders, said in the broadcast via Al-Shabaab controlled Radio Andalus.

"We are urging all the Muslims in Kenya to fight the government of Kenya inside that country, because Kenyans killed your people including children," he added.

Kenyan troops crossed into southern Somalia in 2011 to fight the Shabaab, later joining the now UN-mandated African Union force battling the Islamists. The force has 22,000 military personnel.

Fighter jets, believed to be from Kenya were reported to have struck Shabaab strongholds this week, as part ofthe latest push by the AU force against the insurgents.

"When their soldiers and war planes kill your people, God permits you to retaliate accordingly, we will fight the Kenyans," Khalf said. The commander is viewed as second in importance only to Al-Shabaab chief Ahmed Abdi Godane.

The Shabaab, claimed responsibility for the September 2013 attack on Nairobi's Westgate mall in which at least 67 people were killed. They have also been allegedly blamed for a series of grenade attacks mainly in the capital.

Last week a twin bomb attack in a Nairobi market left 12 people dead and scores wounded, while the United States has announced that  they were preparing to cut staff levels in Kenya because of the mounting threat of attacks.

The Shabaab have also said it was their guerrillas who carried out a deadly ambush on an army convoy in Kenya's north eastern Mandera region on Monday, close to the border with Somalia.

Khalaf said the Shabaab had trained fighters and vowed more would be sent to carry out attacks inside Kenya.

"We have trained the people they are the ones who carried out the Mandera attack," he said. "More are going to be sent soon."

The United States have offered a$5 million bounty for Khalaf, who holds both Somali and Swedish nationality. Khalaf, who the US says is both a Shabaab military commander and key fundraiser, reportedly spent over a decade in the Swedish capital Stockholm.