AP

Kenyan military.

Nairobi - Kenya's tourism minister said on Thursday Nairobi's cross-border operation against Islamist militants in Somalia will not affect the tourism industry in the East African country.

Tourism is one of the top foreign currency earners for the region's biggest economy, bringing in $740 million last year. A record number of tourists visited Kenya, renowned for its game parks and Indian Ocean beaches, in the first six months of 2011.

“... The military response on al Shabaab will not affect tourism activities in the country owing to a raft of security measures already in place to secure all tourist activities,” Najib Balala said in a statement.

Kenya has long been nervously monitoring its anarchic neighbour and its troops have made brief incursions in the past. But after a spate of kidnappings of foreigners in the past few weeks that has put the tourism industry at risk, Nairobi felt it had no choice but to go on the offensive.

A French woman and a British woman have been kidnapped from Kenya's Lamu archipelago on the northern Indian Ocean coast and were whisked by gunmen on speedboats into Somalia. Paris announced on Wednesday that the Frenchwoman had died.

Two Spanish female workers were kidnapped last week from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, near the border with Somalia.

Al Shabaab have denied they were responsible for the kidnappings and say Kenya is using the incidents as a pretext for its operation.

“... Kenya will not be cowed by threats from al Shabaab and will continue to fight in a bid to avert any further threat to the country's stability,” Balala said in the statement. - Reuters