A Somali Islamist group yesterday said it would attack Kenya if the country does not rescind its decision to train Somali government forces.

Sheik Muqtar Robow Abu Mansuur, spokesman for the Islamist Al-Shabaab group, threatened that the group would carry out attacks inside Kenya if the southwestern neighbor does not stop "interfering in Somalia."

"We heard that Kenya wants to train 10,000 Somali government forces, we can understand that is a pretext to wrongly invade our country," Abu Mansuur said in a telephone news briefing for local reporters.

"Peace (between us) is in the interest of both of us (Kenya and Al-Shabaab), so leave us alone but if you come to our country, the peace you purport to have would vanish."

This statement from the Al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia came days after media reports indicated that the Kenyan government plans to help train nearly 10,000 Somali government security forces.

Abu Mansuur said that his group would "humiliate Kenya and like Ethiopia" and "defend Somalia in any way possible". But he did not elaborate.

Al-Shabaab is accused by the United States of having links with Al-Qaida and of being involved in the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassy in Kenya.

The group, one of the major Somali insurgent factions, controls a number of important provinces in the south of Somalia particularly the two Jubba regions and a number of districts in Gedo at the border with Kenya.