Kenyan jets attack militant bases
NAIROBI, Kenya – Kenyan warplanes bombed militant camps in Somalia, officials said Monday, following a vow by President Uhuru Kenyatta to respond “in the fiercest way possible” to a massacre of college students by al-Shabab extremists.
The airstrikes Sunday and Monday targeted the Gedo region of western Somalia, directly across the border from Kenya, said Col. David Obonyo of the Kenyan military.
The Somalia-based militant group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attack at Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya in which militants killed 148 people, most of them students.
Turkey blocks access to social media sites
ISTANBUL – Turkey on Monday blocked access to social networking sites, including Twitter and YouTube, over photos showing a militant pointing a gun at a prosecutor who died last week in a failed hostage rescue operation. Access to Twitter was restored several hours later.
A spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a Turkish prosecutor had ordered Internet providers to block the sites. The request stemmed from postings of photos that showed militant Marxists pointing a gun at the prosecutor, Mehmet Selim Kiraz, who died in a shootout between police and the Marxists who were holding him hostage.
Government officials have blasted Turkish media for posting the images, which they have called anti-government propaganda. Kiraz, was shot in the head during the standoff and died in a hospital soon after.
The state-run Anadolu Agency said access was blocked because Twitter and YouTube didn’t remove images of the prosecutor despite an official notification.
The Turkish telecommunications authority wouldn’t immediately comment.
Associated Press
