This tweet (archived) claims that the video attached is of an Al-Shabaab attack on American troops at the Kenya-Somalia border. The tweet also states that Kenyan and American soldiers were killed in the attack.
Background
Al-Shabaab is an extremist Islamist group founded in the 2000s in Somalia. The insurgent group aims to establish Islamic law in the country. The group is responsible for numerous jihadist attacks in Somalia and Kenya. In Kenya, the most notable attacks by the jihadist group include the Westgate Mall and the Garissa University attacks.
In 2011, Kenya sent troops to Somalia in a peacekeeping mission to fight against the insurgents alongside Western-backed soldiers – AMISOM, prompting retaliatory attacks.
Verification
A reverse image search of keyframes drawn from the video leads to the Google landing page archived here. One of the articles on this page, written in Urdu, has a headline that reads “Somalia: A Truck Bomb Exploded at Security Checkpoint Killing 20 people.”
A Google search shows that this incident, which occurred on September 23, 2023, was also reported by The Guardian and AlJazeera, among other news outlets.
The video in the tweet was posted (archived here) by an account named ‘Kaab Somali TV’ on X (formerly Twitter) on September 23, 2023 at 4:06 pm.
According to these articles, the incident took place in Beledweyne in central Somalia. According to Google Maps, Beledweyne is at least 372 km from the nearest Kenya-Somalia border.
The red point is the location of Beledweyne in Somalia. (Google Maps)
According to the media reports Piga Firimbi assessed, no group had claimed responsibility for the attack, hence the claim that Al-Shabaab “announced” the attack is unfounded.
Verdict
The claim that an attack happened at the Kenya-Somalia border is INACCURATE.
This fact check was published by Piga Firimbi with support from Code for Africa’s PesaCheck and African Fact-Checking Alliance.
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