KAMPALA–Uganda’s military says it killed 189 suspected Islamic extremists with al-Shabab in Somalia in a \u201csurprise, swift\u201d attack that targeted a meeting of members of the armed group.<\/p>\n
The army said in a statement Friday that its contingent of African Union troops in Somalia raided al-Shabab \u201chideouts in the thickets of Sigaale village\u201d about 100 kilometers southwest of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.<\/p>\n
The statement said the operation, including in other villages in the Lower Shabelle region, destroyed military hardware belonging to the extremists and resulted in the arrests of two al-Shabab commanders who were handed over to the Somali army.<\/p>\n
Ugandan troops \u201cdid not incur any loss or injury, nor did any civilian target get affected,\u201d the statement said, citing Brig. Don Nabasa, a Ugandan commander on the ground.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Uganda’s army, Lt. Col. Deo Akiiki, told The Associated Press that the Friday morning operation involved ground and aerial assaults.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately possible to verify the reported death toll.<\/p>\n
The Western-backed deployment of African troops helped to push al-Shabab out of Mogadishu and other areas years ago, though the extremists are still capable of launching lethal bomb attacks targeting public places.<\/p>\n
Al-Shabab, which opposes the presence of foreign troops in Somalia, continues to hold sway over parts of the country’s central and southern regions.<\/p>\n
The 19,000-strong multinational AU force is set to withdraw from Somalia by the end of the year and hand over responsibility for the country’s security to Somali forces.<\/p>\n
Source: Agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KAMPALA–Uganda’s military says it killed 189 suspected Islamic extremists with al-Shabab in Somalia in a \u201csurprise, swift\u201d attack that targeted a meeting of members of the armed group. The army said in a statement Friday that its contingent of African Union troops in Somalia raided al-Shabab \u201chideouts in the thickets of Sigaale village\u201d about 100 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":398467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-402591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402592,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402591\/revisions\/402592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}