At least 115 fighters of the militant Islamist group al-Shabab have been killed in heavy fighting with pro-government forces in northern Somalia, the regional government says.<\/p>\n
A further 110 militants were captured during the fighting, the Galmudug government added in a statement.
\nThere has been no independent confirmation of the claims.<\/p>\n
The al-Qaeda-linked militants have drifted north after losing ground in southern and central Somalia.<\/p>\n
Galmudug’s President Abdikarim Hussein Galaud said the security forces were determined to “wipe out” the militants, and to prevent them from establishing bases in stable parts of the north.<\/p>\n
The militants were defeated after four days of fighting along Galmudug’s border with Puntland, the government statement said.<\/p>\n
A few of them managed to flee into rural areas, it added.
\nThe statement did not give casualty figures for pro-government forces.<\/p>\n
The African Union (AU) has some 22,000 troops battling al-Shabab in southern Somalia, where it was formed nearly a decade ago to fight for Islamic rule.<\/p>\n
Last month, the militants overran an AU base in the southern town of el-Ade.<\/p>\n
Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said about 180 Kenyan troops, which were part of the AU force, were killed in the attack.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At least 115 fighters of the militant Islamist group al-Shabab have been killed in heavy fighting with pro-government forces in northern Somalia, the regional government says. A further 110 militants were captured during the fighting, the Galmudug government added in a statement. There has been no independent confirmation of the claims. The al-Qaeda-linked militants have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}