Here’s a new use of Twitter that we didn’t think of ...

Military forces are using the micro-blogging service to warn civilians of bombing air raids.

It seems that the Kenyan Air Force (yeah, that’s a real thing) has been waging a bombing campaign against the Somali-based terrorist organization al-Shabab, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda, for the past couple months. Al-Shabab has been fighting the barely-existing Somali government for control of certain parts of the country, as well as kidnapping people from Kenya.

Now, warning civilians that live near military targets isn’t exactly a new procedure in air raids -- but, in the past it’s usually been accomplished through radio broadcast messages and dropping pamphlets. However, when fighter pilots for the Kenyan Defense Force were all set to bomb several al-Shabab camps earlier this week, a military spokesman tweeted the names of ten nearby towns and said they should expect continuous bombing. He followed it up a tweet advising anyone with friends or family in the area to tell them to get the hell out. (OK. Maybe those weren’t his exact words.)

We don’t know anyone in Somali, but we’d definitely retweet that info.