The Kenyan military admitted carrying out Sunday's attack on the town of Jilib, where the IDP camp is located, but said the raid targeted al-Shabab fighters who are linked to al-Qaeda and blamed for a string of kidnappings of aid workers and tourists on Kenya's coast.
"I can confirm five dead and 45 wounded," Gautam Chatterjee, head of mission for MSF Holland in Somalia, told the Reuters news agency on Monday."In our hospital in Marare, we received 31 children, nine women and five men. All of them of with shrapnel injuries."
Kenyan troops entered Somalia two weeks ago to hunt down al-Shabab fighters, who have lately crossed into Kenya and kidnapped people. Al-Shabab is also fighting the Western-backed transitional federal government in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.
Al Jazeera's Peter Greste, reporting from the Kenyan capital Nairobi, said MSF officials told him they had seen 45 civilians wounded.
"They are not saying who was responsible for the air strike. But they are saying most of the wounded were civilians who are staying at a camp for displaced people; people who were seeking refugee from the ongoing drought," he said.
"It does look likely, given the MSF report, that there were significant numbers of civilian people who were killed and wounded in that strike."
Somalia's reaction
Abdiwelli Mohammed Ali, the Somali prime minister, said he did not believe the Kenyans were behind the attack.
"I doubt the Kenyans did this. Even if that's the case, I doubt that they have done this on purpose," he told Al Jazeera in Nairobi.
"The Kenyans wouldn't target IDPs. But if that happened, then it's an unfortunate incident. But the fight is not towards this IDPs; the fight was towards the al-Shabab who are a common enemy for both of us.
"They are an enemy for the Somalis and Kenyans. So that's where our focus is and that's where our target is."
A Kenyan army spokesman could not confirm the incident but had said earlier that Kenyan forces had killed around 10 al-Shabab fighters in the same area.
Emmanuel Chirchir said: "We bombed an al-Shabab camp, killed 10 and wounded 47. We are sure about this assessment, no collateral damage, no women, no children."
Abu Omar, a spokesman for al-Shabab, said Kenya should pull troops out of Somalia and denied responsibility for a string of grenade attacks in Nairobi blamed on the group that have left one person dead and injured several.
The Kenyan military has no firm date for a withdrawal from Somalia, the country's military chief, General Julius Karanga, told a news briefing in Nairobi on Saturday.
"When the Kenya government and the people of this country feel that they are safe enough from the al-Shabab menace, we shall pull back," Karangi said.
"Key success factors or indicators will be in the form of a highly degraded al-Shabab capacity."
Both the UN and Ethiopia have earlier sent in forces into Somalia at different times in order to stablise the country during its 20-year civil war, but both were forced to withdraw without ending the conflict.
Karangi said that Kenya did not wish to permanently occupy Somalia, and that his forces were working alongside the UN-backed Somali government.
"We acted as a country on the spur of the moment," he said. "At no point did we plan to enter Somalia and annex territory there."
So far, Kenya has suffered one fatality due to al-Shabab fire, Karangi said. Five personnel were also killed when a helicopter crashed.
He said that hundreds of al-Shabab fighters had been killed in Kenyan operations, though he was not able to confirm that, or provide an exact figure.
'No allied involvement'
Responding to a question regarding any other countries operating in Somalia through the Kenyan intervention, Karangi said that while Kenya had bilateral military agreements with several countries, they were not involved in Nairobi's Somalia operations.
"There has been a lot of talk about other friends of ours participating militarily in what we are engaged in, and the answer is no," he said.
"I think the American ambassador yesterday made it very clear ... that they are not militarily involved in the campaign with us."
Officials present at the briefing dismissed any speculation that the Kenyan government was ready to negotiate with al-Shabab.
"We will not negotiate with criminal terrorist groups," Francis Kimemia, permanent secretary at the internal security ministry said.
Yusuf Haji, the Kenyan defence minister, said that international forces in Somalia would soon be strengthened by a boost in AMISOM, the African Union's mission in Somalia, which consists at the moment of 9,000 Ugandan and Burundian troops.
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