Al-Shabaab and Somali Army Clash Over Strategic Town

Fighting was ongoing between Somalia’s armed forces and the Al-Shabaab Islamist group over a strategic town in the country’s central region, a local militia commander and elder said on Monday. Growing attacks by the Al-Qaeda-linked group, including one on President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s convoy, are fuelling concerns of a jihadist resurgence in the Horn of Africa nation after the militants were forced back in recent years. Al-Shabaab militants attacked Moqokori, roughly 300 kilometres north of the capital Mogadishu, with “vehicles loaded with explosives and hundreds of fighters”, local militia commander Abdulahi Adan said. The town’s militia had “tactically retreated”, he said, but added that “there is still ongoing sporadic fighting in the area, so that this is not a complete takeover”…Moqokori is strategically located as a gateway to several other major towns in the central Hiraan region. The town has long been contested, with Al-Shabaab seizing it in 2016, and last holding it briefly in 2018… [The attack] comes only months after Al-Shabaab took the town of Adan Yabaal, also in the Hiraan region, and which was used as a base by Somali military commanders. (AFP)