Somalia’s government and al-Shabaab militants have issued sharply conflicting accounts of deadly fighting near the southern city of Leego, with both sides claiming to have inflicted heavy losses during a battle on Monday.
The Somali defence ministry said on Tuesday that federal troops had killed 75 militants and wounded 56 others. The al-Qaeda-linked insurgent group claimed it had killed 321 government soldiers during an attack on Turkish-trained troops and an allied militia.
Neither account could be independently verified, leaving the scale of the casualties unclear.
The fighting took place in the Lower Shabelle region, where the government is battling an insurgency that has endured for two decades despite a major international effort to defeat it.