Somali president declares al-Shabab trounced

  1. Posted on Monday 8 August 2011 - 11:20
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    Abdirashid Abdi Diis, AfricaNews reporter in Nairobi, Kenya
    Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said his government military has defeated the country's most powerful Islamist insurgent group al-Shabab. His words came shortly after the loyalist fighters of the militant group had surprisingly abandoned all their positions in Mogadishu, the country's capital city.
    SOMALIA- Al-Shabaab warns African countries
    Although the Islamists had admitted that they deserted their various trenches warfare across the capital lonely, but rejected Sharif’s claim saying that their Friday’s retreat was ‘military tactics’.

    Speaking to a pro-al- Shabab radio station of Andulus based in Mogadishu, the militants’ spokesman Sheikh Ali Mahamud Rage said his group fighters’ pull out was strategic only but not defeat.“We leave Mogadishu but we remain in other towns in the areas we control”, said Rage.

    A-9,000 strong African peacekeeping troops and Somali transitional federal government have been struggling to control that country from a tight grip of the Islamist insurgency more and more since this the beginning of 2011.

    Before Al Shabab’s muscle shrank on Saturday there had been reports of a string of fresh intensified gun battles, being violent later on Friday. Since the insurgent group came into its existence a year ago it had not shown such an act before this.

    Some say if the pull out of the rebels continues it may bear peace in Somalia, and reducing Al-Qaeda threat in the region as soon as possible.
    Somalia has been facing an anarchic period since the fall of dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre regime in 1991.

    The rebels are said to be intended to topple the government while imposing a strict version of Islamic Sharia Law in the country, where it accuses the internationally recognized government to be a western puppet.

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