Somali forces and allied militias have pushed al Shabaab fighters out of a strategic town in central Somalia that the Islamist group has controlled for six years, officials and the African Union (AU) said on Tuesday.
The government, backed by AU troops and clan militias, says it has killed around 700 members of al Shabaab and recaptured scores of settlements as part of a months-long campaign to loosen the al Qaeda-linked group’s control over large swathes of the country.
Mahamud Hasan Mahamud, the mayor of Adan Yabal in Middle Shabelle region, said the army and militias had taken control of the town and the surrounding district of the same name without encountering resistance on Monday.
