Al Shabaab seize third Somalia town this month after AU troops withdraw

Military and police gather at the scene of a suicide attack near the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) headquarters in Mogadishu, on July 31, 2016. [Photo: AFP]

Islamist militant group Al Shabaab Sunday seized control of yet another town in central Somalia.

This is after it was abandoned by African Union peacekeepers, a militant spokesman and a local official said, the third to fall to insurgents this month.

Sunday, an Ethiopian contingent abandoned the town of Halgan in the Hiran region, allowing the group’s fighters to enter soon after, said Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s spokesman on military operations.

A military offensive launched in 2014 by AU forces and the Somali army pushed out of major strategic centres, but the insurgents, who once held sway over much of the Horn of Africa country, still control some settlements and rural areas.

The fall of Halgan was confirmed by Dahir Amin Jesow, an MP from the region, who said residents are being subjected to reprisals at the hands of the insurgents.

“Each day, civilians are being beheaded over suspicion that they are government supporters,” he told Reuters. “We do not have a government that is effective enough to protect our civilians.”

The reason for the peacekeepers’ withdrawal was not clear. Officials in Ethiopia were not immediately available for comment.

Somalia has been convulsed by instability, conflict and lawlessness since the early 1990s following the toppling of military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Propped up by the African Union-mandated force known as Amisom, Somalia’s military and central government have strengthened their grip on the country but a relentless campaign of violence by Al Shabaab persists.

REGULAR ATTACKS

The group regularly attacks Amisom’s troops, which is made up of about 22,000 soldiers and police from African nations supporting Somalia’s government and army.

Al Shabaab aims to drive out the peacekeepers, topple Somalia’s Western-backed government and impose a strict version of Islam.

Meanwhile, Somali pirates have freed 26 Asian sailors held captive in a small fishing village for more than four years since their ship was hijacked in the Indian Ocean, government officials and a maritime expert said on Saturday.

The sailors from China, the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Taiwan were seized when the Omani-flagged FV Naham 3 was hijacked close to the Seychelles in March 2012, when pirate attacks were common in the area.

“The crew is staying overnight in Galkayo. They will arrive in (the Kenyan capital) Nairobi at 1830 local time tomorrow,” said John Steed, East Africa region manager for the Oceans Beyond Piracy group.

The mayor of Galkayo in northern Somalia had earlier said the crew was set to arrive in Kenya on Saturday afternoon.

“The crew did not say if ransom was paid,” mayor Hirsi Yusuf Barre told Reuters.

Their period of captivity is one of the longest among hostages seized by pirates in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation.

Steed said one member of the crew had died during the hijacking while two succumbed to illness. Among those released, one was being treated for a gunshot wound on his foot and three were diabetic.

The sailors were held in Dabagala near the town of Harardheere some 400km northeast of the capital Mogadishu. Harardheere became known as Somalia’s main pirate base at the height of the crisis.