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Officials in Somali government says the national army allied with the African Union forces seized several strategic positions that had been under the control of the al-Shabaab for the past three years.
Mohamed Farah, the spokesman of Somali forces in Jubba regions, told Shabelle Media by phone that the allied forces took full control of the last al-Shabaab pockets located on the outskirts of west of the port town of Kismayo during armed confrontations over the last two days.
At least 10 soldiers were killed and another 50 were reported missing after friendly fire caused a South Sudanese military boat to sink on the Nile river, the army said Saturday.
“It was an accident. The boat was travelling at night and passed before a (control) post at Lul, which tried to stop the boat. When it did not stop they fired at the boat and it sank,” army spokesman Philip Aguer told AFP, adding that there were about 170 soldiers on board.
“Ten bodies were retrieved from the water… there are about 50 still missing,” he said, adding that 112 survivors were picked up following the accident on Wednesday.
The military chiefs of 15 West African nations have begun deliberations in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to “finalize a road map” for an armed intervention in Mali, whose northern half is occupied by Islamists linked to al-Qaeda.
Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traore, left, asked the Economic Community of West African States, or Ecowas, on Sept. 1 for air support to destroy rebel bases and for five battalions to help reconquer northern towns.
Somali government forces backed by AMISOM troops have captured Harbole town in southern Somalia.
The brief afternoon operation also recovered an assortment of weapons and ammunition from the al-Qaeda-affiliated terror group, al-Shabaab.Harbole is 6km from Miido which also fell to AMISOM troops just 10 days ago.
President Obama denounced the wave of violence that swept through the Middle East and claimed the lives of four Americans in Libya including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens.
The envoy was killed after gun-toting protesters stormed the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city.
Ethiopia’s government is in peace talks with the Ogaden National Liberation Front, an outlawed ethnic-Somali rebel group, Communications Minister Bereket Simon said.
“It’s a very positive step and we will pursue negotiations up to the last and try to bring all concerned in that area to the constitutional framework,” Bereket said in a phone interview from the capital, Addis Ababa, today.
Principles to end the 28-year conflict in the Ogaden area of Ethiopia’s Somali regional state were agreed during initial talks on Sept. 6 and Sept. 7 in Nairobi, the rebel group said in an e-mailed statement today.
Clashes erupted between Sudan’s army and rebels in the western Darfur region and in a southern state, killing dozens of people including civilians, the sides said on Friday, the latest violence in the country’s borderlands.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is battling an alliance of rebel groups operating in Darfur and two states bordering its neighbor South Sudan.
Sudan accuses South Sudan of supporting the rebels, while Juba says Khartoum funds militias in South Sudan. Diplomats say that both allegations are credible.