Four years later, government remains tight-lipped on El Adde attack

Today marks exactly four years since Al Shabaab militants staged the most brutal and brazen attack yet on Kenyan troops when they staged an assault at the KDF base in El Adde, in the Gedo region near the Kenyan border.

It remains possibly, the deadliest blitz on the Africa Mission in Somalia (Amisom), surpassing the death toll of the Garissa University attack where 147 people were killed.

The El Adde attack was claimed by Saleh An-Nabhani Battalion, an al Shabaab faction named after Mombasa-born Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, who was killed during the United States Navy SEALs' raid in 2009.

The group is said to comprise of specialists in suicide bombings and bush ambush.

As Kenya came to terms with the massacre, government officials including commander-in-chief President Uhuru Kenyatta, Chief of Defence Forces General Samson Mwathethe and the then Defence CS Rachael Omamo promised a thorough investigation and a "painful lesson" to the militants.

On January 15, 2016, the terrorists ran over the KDF military camp and butchered KDF soldiers working under the Amisom command in one of the country’s darkest battleground losses.

However, the precise extent of that defeat and many of the details have still not been made public.

Despite an inquiry by the KDF and a parliamentary investigation, there is not yet a full public account of the battle and the lessons that should be drawn from it.

There has also not been much of a public debate about what it means for the African Union Mission in Somalia.

The government has remained tight-lipped on numbers of casualties that arose from the deadly incursion.

The El Adde incursion was the third Amisom forward operating base overrun by al Shabaab in seven months.