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Hundreds of residents have fled the southern Somali port of Kismayo after the Kenyan navy shelled the town ahead of an expected ground operation to capture it, officials and residents said Tuesday.
Kismayo is the main remaining stronghold of the al-Qaeda-linked militants of al-Shabaab. The group, considered terrorists by the United States and others, is waging an insurgency against the U.N.-backed Somali government, which is being bolstered by African Union troops including Kenyan forces.
African Union and Somali forces captured the town of Miido in an overnight battle that began Friday evening (August 31st), killing 36 al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab militants, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) announced.
Miido is situated 16 kilometres south of Afmadow, which was recently secured by AMISOM troops.
Islamic extremists have seized control of the strategic town of Douentza, moving much closer to government-held territory in central Mali.
Residents say that early on Saturday morning, a convoy of pick-up trucks carrying bearded men entered the town, about 800 kilometres northeast of the capital, Bamako.
Although far from the capital, Douentza is only 190km from Mopti, which marks the line-of-control held by the Malian military.
Islamist leader Oumar Ould Hamaha said the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (known by the French acronym MUJAO) had seized Douentza after a brief standoff with the local self-defence militia, which formerly controlled the town.
Somali military officials told media Monday afternoon that the city was captured by the allied forces after al-Shabaab retreated.
“The district of Merca is in the control of Somali and AMISOM forces and there was no resistance when our forces entered the city,” said General Abdikarim Yusuf Adan.
According to local residents, before the al-Shabaab agents fled the city they had killed four people, it is unclear why they were killed.
The Sudanese army has denied claims by rebels in the country’s western region of Darfur that they killed 11 soldiers in an ambush on Monday.
The official spokesman of the army known as SAF, Al-Sawarmi Khalid Saad, said on Wednesday that no clashes occurred with Darfur rebels during the month of Ramadan and Eid holiday.
Al-Sawarmi was reacting to a news report in which the Darfur rebel Sudan Liberation Movement of Mani Arkoi Minnawi (SLM-MM) said it killed 11 army soldiers in an ambush on Monday.
The Ethiopian Federal military is preparing an action plan in the event of an attack following the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The force is deploying ground troops on number of fronts.
Thousands troops backed by heavy artillery are massing up on the country’s border with Somaliland. According to eyewitnesses more than 4,000 soldiers crossed into Jigjiga on Tuesday and are said to be heading to the border.
The news of the build-up has prompted Somaliland to respond and spread its own forces along the long common-border. Local reports indicate that they have been placed on high alert with fears rebels might try to destabilise the region.
Nigerian security forces killed 20 suspected militants of the Boko Haram sect in a shootout on Sunday as they raided an Islamist hideout in the country’s northeast, a security officer said.
One soldier was also killed in the shootout in Maiduguri, the capital of the Borno state, the officer said.
Boko Haram, an Islamist group styled on the Taliban, is waging an insurgency against the government with a view to creating an Islamic state in Nigeria, a country of more than 160 million split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims.